Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I got a book from the library Called the Cost of Moral Leadership, the Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, all quotes come from this book. In the first chapter I found these gems from his last days before his execution in the Nazi extermination camp called Flossenburg, that have captured my thoughts since I read them:

On his execution day Bonhoeffer was asked to conduct a prayer service. "On April 8, 1945, Bonhoeffer, pastor to the end, meditated briefly on two...texts for the day, Isaiah 53:5 ("By His wounds we are healed") and I Peter 1:3 ("Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead")

A person in the room that day would later recall this "Bonhoeffer reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought. The calm that ensued was interupted by the arrival of two evil looking Gestapo agents take Bonhoeffer away to his court martial and execution."

"The only account of Bonhoeffer's death was given by the prison doctor, who wrote that, after the sentences had been read out to the condemned men, he saw 'Pasor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer.' he added, 'at the place of execution he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed...in the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man so entirely submissive to the will of God.'"

Thirteen years prior to Bonhoeffer's execution he offered this in a sermon, "we must not be surprised if once again times return for our Church when the blood of martyrs will be required. But even if we have the courage and faith to spill it, this blood will not be as innocent or as clear of that of the first martyrs."