Yesterday, Today, and Forever

by Maria Von Trapp

  But the shepherds were afraid with the fear of Samson’s parents. How must that have been when the brightness of God shone round about them? It is quite good to stop for a moment at such expressions and let our imagination take over. What have we seen in our life which we would call bright? The noonday sun on a summer’s day on top of a glacier? The explosion of an atomic bomb? Compared with the “brightness of God,” they must be like the flicker of a little candle. And this is what the shepherds saw. And what did the angel himself look like? The shepherds don’t tell, but Isaiah, hundreds of years before them, had once had a look at the seraphim and described them: “Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew” (Isa. 6:2).

  And who was this angel? We don’t know for sure, but tradition has it that it was Gabriel, the angel of the incarnation. Now the angel talks; and again let us use our imagination and think of different voices we have heard and which we still remember for their beauty of tone. And again we may be sure that this angelic voice ringing out loud and reassuringly through the night must have been more beautiful that anything we can remember. “Fear not,” the angel said, “for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10–11; KJV). It is true that these shepherds were illiterate, and for this they were cursed by the scribes. But this message they did understand, because they had been waiting all their lives for this Christ the Lord, that He might come and redeem them from the unbearable burdens which the Pharisees themselves would not deign to carry.

  “And this shall be a sign unto you,” continued the angel. “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12; KJV). Now the shepherds knew they would not have to go into town and knock from door to door. If He was lying in a manger, it could only be in a certain cave not far away. So the Messiah had come — not as a king on horseback, and not like Melchisedec appearing in great dignity suddenly and mysteriously, but as a little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, exactly as one of their own children was wrapped up and carried around by their wives.

  The very moment when the great angel had finished, his message there burst suddenly forth a torrent of heavenly music, and when the shepherds looked up in still more wonder and awe, they saw what the evangelist would describe as a “multitude of the heavenly host” (Luke 2:13; KJV). Daniel of old, when he had once had a similar vision, tried to describe it: “A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him” (Dan. 7:10). That must be about a “multitude of the heavenly host.” And they were now “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men’ ” (Luke 2:13–14). What a choir! And this was the only time the heavenly multitudes are known to have chanted for the children of men. When Isaiah heard them, he said: “And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called” (Isa. 6:3–4). Again, we might stop for a moment and think of the choirs we have heard in our life: small choirs, large choirs, men’s, women’s, children’s voices — chanting in unison, or singing in parts. And as all human brightness was dimmed when compared with the brightness of God, so all created melody faded before the chant of heaven. There we remember the story told about young Mozart when he came to Rome and listened for the first time to the Sistine Choir performing the Miserere, composed by Allegri exclusively for the Sistine Chapel. Under threat of excommunication it was forbidden to copy this great work. Mozart, after having listened to it once, returned to his hotel room and wrote it down from memory. What a pity that none of the shepherds handed on the song of the first Gloria!

  And what happened then? When the angels left the shepherds, there was no argument, no round-table discussion with which we people of later centuries so often kill the sound of the heavenly message in our hearts. They simply “said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’ And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child” (Luke 2:15–17).

  We don’t have to say, “Oh, I wish I had been there.” It is not over yet. Christ the Lord is still being born to us, if we just learn to see Him lying helpless and in poverty. Then it could be said of us also what we can say of those shepherds: “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Luke 10:23–24).

  The Trapp children, left to right: Martina, Johanna, Hedwig, Werner, Maria, Agathe, and Rupert.

  Chapter 6

  Mary Pondered in Her Heart

  There is a certain flavor to the days after a child is born into a home. Gratefulness that all went well, a deep relief from anxiety, a new happiness, and a more tender love hover over the household. All this must have been true of the very first Christian family who ever lived, only much more so. Of the young girl mother it is told that she didn’t need any help, neither for herself nor for her little child. She was able to take care of Him alone right away. “And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger” (Luke 2:7).

  We can imagine Joseph going into Bethlehem every day, partly to buy fresh food, and partly to watch how the census was going. In 40 days he would have to present mother and child in the temple, and from what they had just gone through on their winter’s journey, they decided to wait in Bethlehem. Of course, Joseph was trying to get his family out of the cave, and so he kept looking for a house. At the same time he may have been looking for a job. When he came back from his trips into town, he told Mary that the shepherds couldn’t get over the things they had heard and seen in that unforgettable night, and had told their friends and neighbors. “And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them” (Luke 2:18). What did Mary do about this? She “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

  The way people react to important happenings in their lives, may they be exceedingly happy or sad, gives the deepest insight into their character. Let’s just look around us. What is the usual reaction among our friends and neighbors if in a family something unexpected happens? Let us say the father of the family suddenly loses his whole fortune, or he is unexpectedly promoted to a big job. What is the usual reaction? Telephone and telegraph are immediately put to work, letters are written by the score, and the incident is discussed for days on end. It is no wonder that there is no time left in which to ponder on what it might mean, what message God might want to bring home to us by permitting this or that to happen in our lives.

  “To ponder” is just another word for “to meditate on” or simply “to think about.” With a special effort, some of us might set aside 15 minutes a day out of a sense of duty to ponder upon divine things. This time of meditation can turn into a real bother, and we may spend it looking at the watch. At the slightest provocation, we gladly omit it. We are very easily “too busy to keep it up.” But with Mary, it seems to be second nature. Already, as a child in the temple, she must have been meditating on the law of the Lord all the days of her life, as it says in Psalm 118. The splendor of the house of God, the starry sky at night, the countryside of Judea, the Word of God as it was read to her from ancient scrolls by her teachers — everything was one big meditation book for her, telling of the grandeur and also of the mercy of God. She never grew tired of pondering on all those things in her heart.

  If we would only give it a try and introduce this attitude into our homes, families, and schools again, and teach our children to think things over in their hearts! The Quakers do it — why not all of us? This is an al
l-but-forgotten art in our days. Who thinks? We don’t need to any more. The TV and radio do it for us, and the daily papers, magazines, digests, and quite recently, digests of digests. Once when we attended a symphony concert at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, a lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Baroness, I would be very much obliged if you could tell me what I should think about this concert.” It sounds funny, but one should not laugh, one should cry at such poverty. How different it was with Mary, who started a life of pondering early in her youth!

  There must have been visitors in the cave in that first week, only simple people because the highbrows didn’t have anything to do with such castaways as the shepherds. Visiting in the Orient is identical to bringing gifts, and the shepherds gave milk, butter, cheese, and bread, as the carols tell us.

  While Mary and Joseph were tending to the simple chores of those days, cleaning out the cave, tending to the child, tending to the animals, receiving the shepherds with their families and friends, the king of Israel in his palace, thousands of God’s priests, and all those scribes and Pharisees only a few miles away, didn’t know what the smallest shepherd child in the valley of Bethlehem knew. This is the secret of God, who can only be found and recognized by simple hearts.

  Toward the end of this week Joseph had to make preparations for the circumcision. This was a ceremony of the pious Jews which goes back to Abram. He was once called out of his tent at night and God told him, “ ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be’ ” (Gen. 15:5). There the first covenant, “The Old Testament,” was contracted between God and men. At this time Abram was given a new name, Abraham. This is the origin of the custom that a Jewish child is given his name at his circumcision.

  On the evening before that day, it was customary throughout the country for the parents of the baby to invite the children of the neighborhood for a party. The new baby was shown to them. So Joseph went out to invite the children of the shepherds, and when they came, Mary and Joseph entertained their little guests and showed them their newborn baby. And they still do so year after year, Christmas week having become a big children’s party all over the world.

  The circumcision was performed by the Jewish priests or elders in the homes of the people, not in the temple or synagogue. We know from Luke that when little John was circumcised, there was a great feast with all the friends and neighbors present. Such family feasts are always accompanied in the Orient by a meal, and there is always a crowd of poor people gathered at such events, sure of some alms.

  On the eighth day Joseph went to Bethlehem and returned with a priest and a woman who assisted at such occasions. They brought the circumcision stool and a slab of stone around two feet in diameter, the circumcision stone, and there was a knife and a few boxes with ointments. A small carpet was spread on the rough floor of the cave, and everything was set up. The priest took the child out of the arms of the mother. They prayed and sang for some time, and then the priest asked the father which name the child should be given. “Jesus,” said Joseph, as it had been announced by the angel. The woman showed the troubled young mother how to attend the wound, then they wrapped the child tightly in red and white swaddling clothes, and the ceremony was over. With the gifts of the shepherds, they now arranged a little meal, and the rest they gave to the poor. The child was crying and restless, and Mary and Joseph tried to soothe Him by carrying Him up and down the cave.

  Suffering had entered into this little family. Suffering calls forth compassion; compassion, however, deepens love. This is the way it works in every ordinary family, and this is exactly the way it happened in the holy family. Oh, we can’t start soon enough to get these three persons out of the picture frames, down from the niches, and let them become again what they really were — breathing, warm-blooded people with hearts full of emotions. There was in the cave on that day a father, a mother, and a little child. What might they have said and done to each other, and what might they have said and done to the little baby? I can’t forget how one of my children once said, “In the holy family they never laughed or cried, did they?”

  “They most certainly did,” I answered with emphasis. “Why not?”

  “But weren’t they too holy?” Asked the little one with awe.

  It is all so wrong; and the statues in the churches, and the pictures in the books have a great deal to do with it. But let us get down to facts. When God in His eternal wisdom resolved to redeem mankind, He had infinite ways in which to do it. There were shapes and forms we can think of, such as sending the Messiah as an angel in great power and glory, or as a mighty king on horseback, then there are many more possibilities which we in our limited mind can’t even conceive. But no, Almighty God chose none of those ways, but instead, sent His only Son as a little child into a family. Men have founded orders, congregations, and organizations; God’s own foundation is the Christian family. A real mother, a real father, and a real child, living, loving, suffering — not symbols, but people like us. If this was God’s own and only choice from those myriad, infinite possibilities, then we should say, “Amen, so be it.”

  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Only then does it make sense that God became man and cried as a little baby in His mother’s arms. If we do this, we shall very soon find how we keep pondering in our hearts, because there will be so very much to ponder about that one short life won’t be time enough. It will take eternity.

  Chapter 7

  The Purification and the Presentation

  There are many things we really don’t know about the childhood story of our Lord and there is absolutely no way of finding out. For instance, how long the census may have taken in Bethlehem, how long the little town was overcrowded, and how soon Joseph could take his family from the cave into a house. In a way it doesn’t matter, and in a way it does. As soon as you have started to re-live the life of our Lord together with your family as closely as possible day by day — you discover that this is something which has a beginning but no end. The more one has found out, the more one still has to find out. As soon as the children’s interest is aroused, questions will never cease. This is a typical one: How long was the holy family in the cave? Once in a while it will happen that even after much research you will have to say, “I really don’t know”; but this is already great progress compared with those who, when asked this same question, answer, “What do I care?”

  Our children wanted to have a day by day account. Now the priest of the circumcision has left with the woman and the implements. What happened next? We figured out together that the next days and nights might have been pretty unquiet with a sick baby in the house. When the wound had healed, the little Jesus smiled again; how relieved Mary and Joseph must have felt.

  “And how about the census?” asked one of the youngsters. “Didn’t Joseph have to go downtown and announce the new name?”

  This was a good question. Surely Joseph had to do that, and so we accompanied him “downtown” to Bethlehem, as he approached once more the census taker, and watched how for the first time in history the holy name was written down. This was not an uncommon name, and in the way of His days it was spelled Joshua or Jeshua.

  Even if we don’t know how long it was, we may be sure it was as soon as possible that Joseph got his little family into a house in Bethlehem. The next thing was to find out how the house in Bethlehem looked. With the help of pictures from illustrated articles and postcards sent by friends from their pilgrimages to the Holy Land, we easily found out what the houses looked like.

  What I am telling here does not refer to the happenings of one year. It also is not storytelling to children. It is honest-to-goodness research work done by a whole family throughout the years. Your interest, once aroused, will compel you to watch out for illustrated articles about the Holy Land and to keep postcards from there. A map of
the Holy Land will soon prove to be an absolute must. What fun it was when we also found a map of Vermont on the same scale and put the two on the wall next to each other to compare. The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem was about as far as from Stowe to Rutland, or a little less. From Jerusalem to Bethlehem it would be five miles south of Stowe and one mile east. It is a good idea to take a family hike of just this distance once, both ways on foot, of course, because soon we accompany the holy family on their way to Jerusalem, to the temple.

  “The days of her purifying” refers to a law in the Old Testament. “She shall touch no hallowed thing,” it says of a mother after she has given birth to a child, “nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled” (Lev. 12:4; KJV). This was 40 days if the child was a boy and 80 days if the child was a girl, that the mother could not enter the temple and was liturgically unclean. Then the law continues: “And when the days of her purification are fulfilled, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest: Who shall offer it before the Lord, and make an atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed…. And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons …and the priest shall make an atonement for her, and she shall be clean” (Lev. 12:6-8; KJV). Right away the idea comes to one’s mind: Mary was not allowed to touch any holy thing — but there she was carrying holiness itself around in her arms, and she was not supposed to enter into the sanctuary of the temple.