Advent
“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise.”
~ Karl Rahner, SJ
“Will the Christian Church survive?” from the October 1942 issue of The Atlantic.
“If man, as envisioned by democrats and totalitarians alike, is for himself a determining end; if he may safely do as he pleases, in such fashion as may from time to time seem to him expedient; if he is able to handle his affairs without redemption from an ingrained folly; if in his own power he can rise above self-seeking and live in a voluntary sociality; if he is able to get along quite nicely without contact with any power not of himself which makes for righteousness—then Christianity is irrelevant to life. In that case the Church is at worst an incubus which ought to be destroyed and from which innocent children should be protected, at best an ivory tower in which peculiar and incompetent people may from time to time be permitted to take refuge from reality—an institution insignificant but relatively harmless.”
Click the link to read more about how the post- WWII church was envisioned or hoped or deplored:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1942/10/will-the-christian-church-survive/306720/
Believe it. 