Prison Prayers for Advent
Bonhoeffer teaches us to pray from within his own trials
I find Advent a heavy and holy time. Some of that is personal and some of that is the season itself. I’ve lost friends during this season, and it often has seemed to be one of the most difficult ministry seasons for me. Despite how present those are to me each Advent, over the years I think I’ve tried to keep those two things separate. To hold the holy at arm’s length from my heaviness. Somehow I think I’ve assumed that to be a good pastor required me to keep things personal and ministerial separate (I assume you know that doesn’t work).
My recent reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondences shows how impossible that was for him. His life and influence held, as it was, within a cell, highlights the lunacy we inflict on ministers by suggesting that somehow what they do is a “job”. Our lives are not compartmentalized memories of disconnected spirituality and experience, so it’s impossible to imagine that our ministers will do better if we insist they live like their calling is somehow something they pick up between 9 and 5. Bonhoeffer is a pastor, whether in prison or not. He’s also a man who prays, whether in prison or not. As such, when in prison, he prays and helps others pray because that is who he is.
In November of 1943 during his first year in prison, Bonhoeffer communicated regularly with his dear friend, and later biographer, Eberhard Bethge. Sandwiched directly between deciding to send a copy of his Will to Bethge (“following yesterday’s air raid”) because he worried his attorney might be ignored, and a letter thanking Bethge for sending along the gift of a cigar from Karl Barth and encouraging him to eat the bacon he sent back as a gift(!) he composes a series of prayers for prisoners. I prefer not to eat meat and I don’t smoke, so I can’t really decide which of these gifts I’d prefer. But choosing between a gift from Karl Barth or Dietrich Bonhoeffer might be what I would understand as an eternal conscious punishment.
The prayers, however, are beautiful. Bethge encouraged him to write them, and said that they,
“Belong to the most profound expressions of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality. They were not jotted down spontaneously but were composed after extended meditation and experienced discipline.”1
They appear to have been intended to be shared amongst prisoners, a sort of impromptu prayerbook for their situation. I’m drawn to them just now because they infer Advent. It’s implicit in them, but they do appear in late November, so the Advent “feel” is likely not imagined. I think they serve as good prayers for those of us who wish to not be bifurcated and compartmentalized.
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Prayers for Prisoners: Morning Prayer2
God, I call to you early in the morning, help me pray and collect my thoughts, I cannot do so alone. In me it is dark, but with you there is light. I am lonely, but you do not abandon me. I am faint-hearted, but from you comes my help. I am restless, but with you is peace. In me is bitterness, but with you is patience. I do not understand your ways, but you know [the] right way for me.
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Prayers for Prisoners: Prayer in Particular Need3
Lord God, misery has come over me. My afflictions are about to crush me, I don’t know which way to turn. God, be gracious and help me. Give me strength to bear what you send. Do not let fear rule over me. Give fatherly care to those I love, especially my wife and children, protect them with your strong hand from all evil and all danger. Merciful God, forgive me everything in which [I] have sinned against you and others. I trust in your grace and commit my life entirely into your hand. Do with me as pleases you and as is good for me. Whether I live or die, I am with you and you are with me, my God. Lord, I await your salvation and your kingdom. Amen.
He concludes this prayer by suggesting that the prisoner sing a verse from the Lutheran hymn “Why should cross and trial grieve me?” which itself is telling of how he was navigating his own self throughout the ordeal that eventually led to his death.
He tells Bethge in the days after these letters that he is pleased that the experience of prison has left him “unchanged in the essentials,”4 and therefore, on the first day of Advent, in a Nazi prison, he did what we probably all should do this week.
Bonhoeffer hung an Advent wreath on his wall.5
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Now your manger, shining bright, hallows night with newborn light. Night cannot this light subdue; let our faith shine ever new.
Martin Luther, v.5 of “Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland”
Bethge, Erstes Gebot und Zeitgeschichte, p.77
Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison DWBE 8, p.194-195
ibid. p.198
ibid. p.199
He also had an ostrich egg for breakfast, but I’ll pass on that. ibid. p.201