As always, Fr. Peter John Cameron gives us a gem:

Father Alfred Delp, the heroic German Jesuit who was executed in 1945 for his resistance to the Nazi regime, wrote this:

Oh, if people know nothing about the promises anymore, if they only experience the four walls and the prison windows of their gray days, and no longer perceive the quiet footsteps of the announcing angels, if the angel’s murmured word does not simultaneously shake us to the depths and lift up our souls–then it is over for us.  Then we are living wasted time, and we are dead, long before they do anything to us.

This Advent is the perfect occasion to take account of all the walls, and prison windows, and gray days that we let define our lives.  There are quiet footsteps and murmured words of announcing angles coming our way, too, to remind us of God’s awesome promises.