Whether or not Dietrich Bonhoeffer was greatly familiar with quiet, arched, monastic corridors and hallways, I do not know. I do know, however, that his manuscripts entitled, Ethics, were written in Berlin at the abbey of Ettal; and that as a staff member of the Abwehr, erstwhile a collaborator of the German Resistance to Hitler, monastic solitude gave him cover . Certainly there was something of the monastic about him, and this “something” is manifest throughout Life Together, which he wrote and published after the Gestapo closed the Finkenwalde seminary, which he directed.
Consistent with who he was, even if at moments he was “monastic,” he had and maintained a firm grasp of the world and of the Church within that world. (How else does one explain his prophetic voice lifted against Hitler and his demonic machinery—and Bonhoeffer’s eventual execution by the Nazis?) Thus, if the Finkenwalde seminary was to be a retreat for those entering upon pastoral ministry, it was only that as a means of preparing them for the sheep, horribly scattered and frightened by Hitler’s henchmen.
As he prepared those student-pastors then under his tutelage, he reminded them of this truth:
“So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing.”*
I do believe that Bonhoeffer was right: Christian fellowship is a gracious gift, and approximately five years after these published words, he became one the imprisoned lonely—“like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat”, and yet he did not despair altogether.**
He knew the gift of Christian fellowship, and he knew the One who had given him that gift. I too know and believe that Christian fellowship is a gracious gift, and yet I have not known Nazi persecution, or the persecution many of faith encounter even as I write these words. And so I wonder: Have I lived in a bubble most of my life? Might I some day rue what presently is so easily had? I wonder …
Faithfully,
Stan
*Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, tr. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1954), p.18.
**Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), p. 189.