Isaiah 63: 16b-17, 64: 1, 3-8 (RM in Canada) or Isaiah 63: 16b-17, 19b, 64: 2-7 (RM in U.S.) or 64: 1-9 (RCL); Psalm 80; I Corinthians 1: 3-9; Mark 13: 33-37 (RM) or 24-37 (RCL.)

The cosmos was just so much simpler for our ancient ancestors. There was the surface of the earth. Then there’s the unknown, shadowy underworld. And then, spread over the top, is the great canopy of the sky with the stars as tiny lights. Rather like a party tent with strings of twinkly lights dangling from the tent poles.

How we might wish that, when suffering, aggression and terror are widespread, a great saviour, a Superman, would just come flying down from above the top of the tent, to restore justice and create universal healing.

Our first reading from Isaiah hits hard, a cry of agony across the earth pleading to God to overlook the sins of the people and to save them from the impending terror of doom and death. The hymn version in German hits even harder:

O Saviour, rend the heavens wide,
Come down, come down with mighty stride,
Unlock the gates, the doors break down,
Un-bar the way to heaven’s crown.

O Morning Star, O radiant Sun,
When will our hearts behold your dawn?
O Sun arise; without your light,
We grope in gloom, and dark of night.

Sin’s dreadful doom upon us lies,
Grim death looms fierce before our eyes.
O come, lead us with mighty hand,
From exile to our promised land.*

On this First Sunday of Advent, let me introduce you to the composer of that powerful hymn. His name was Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld (1591-1635). He can be a companion for us in our troublous times and our search for hope amid intense fear and foreboding for the future.

In 1998 I was honoured to be a house guest of two of the recognized grandmothers of the women’s ordination movement in the Roman Catholic Church, Ida Raming and the now-deceased Iris Müller. They lived then in Greven, a small town outside Münster in northern Germany. When Ida heard that I was travelling on to Trier, she exclaimed, “Oh, but you must make a pilgrimage to the grave of Friedrich Spee! He is a hero of the women’s movement, and he’s buried in the Jesuit church in Trier.”

I knew the Jesuit church well – it’s right across the courtyard from the original site of the German Liturgy Institute. But I had never heard of Friedrich Spee and somehow hadn’t noticed the tomb under the floor in a side chapel on the right.

The reason why this young Jesuit priest is considered a hero of the women’s movement today is because he was the first cleric in his time to publically denounce the burning of women as witches. This was early seventeenth-century Germany where a terror of the devil and his supposed secret agents on earth, witches, was a powerful force in society. Friedrich Spee had been assigned to serve as confessor to many of the condemned women before they were burned at the stake. The more he heard, the more he was convinced that these women could not have been witches. They had been falsely accused. He spoke out. And he suffered persecution and great pressure from Church and society as a result.

But there’s another reason to honour his courage. In 1632 the young professor arrived in Trier and found a region severely affected by a contagious deadly disease. He became a volunteer nurse caring for mortally ill patients during the pandemic, and died of the sickness himself at the age of 44.

Friedrich Spee lived the hymn lyrics he had written,

“We grope in gloom and dark of night … Grim death looms fierce before our eyes.” Yet, like Isaiah, he prayed with hope above all fear, “Oh come, lead us … from exile to our promised Land.”

May we all find ways to reflect and speak a powerful, vivifying hope to each other.

© Susan K. Roll

*English version of “O Heiland reiß die Himmel auf,” translated by Martin L Seltz, Lutheran Book of Worship © 1978.

**Part of this Reflection was adapted from that of November 29, 2020.