Alfred Delp , the Jesuit priest also killed by the Nazis, wrote his most lasting pieces from prison before his own hanging they are his Advent letters. The four American women killed 20 years ago by government-sponsored forces in El Salvador were martyred during the first week of Advent. Martyrdoms during Advent rescue Christmas from being a sentimental celebration untrue to our experiences of limit . But martyrdoms witness to something more mysterious, something we cannot understand but only hope to let settle into our hearts. As the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion.
Life is a journey of limiting experiences .
But the Church helps us out here. The Church takes these limiting experiences and turns them into liminal experiences. Limiting experiences remind us brutally of our powerlessness, period. We Christians positively celebrate limiting experiences, because it is precisely in those experiences that our olympic strivings give way to the searching, caring power of the Good Shepherd, who securely and infallibly tracks us in our uncharted wanderings, finds us, sweeps us into his arms, and brings us home.