Yesterday, Today, and Forever

by Maria Von Trapp

  Finally, the weary wanderers saw before them the many waters of the Nile, the green and lush delta. Tradition has it that they went to Heliopolis. In order to get there they must have passed through many towns before, through well-irrigated fields, finally passing obelisks and pyramids. Mary and Joseph must have talked about the role Egypt had played in the history of their people. Abraham had fled there once in time of famine, and another Joseph had been taken there by force. At that Joseph’s invitation, he finally got his whole clan into the land. For the next four hundred years they would be first the guests of the pharaoh, and later slaves until God would awaken Moses to lead them away into the Promised Land. Mary and Joseph must have talked about all this, and many times they must have recited together the psalms which dealt with captivity and hardship and the Heavenly Father finally leading them out into green pastures.

  One of the glories of doing this particular story from the Gospels as a family is that one really learns so much about Egypt. The different children in their different grades can now contribute what they know about the old Egyptians and how they lived. For the parents, school days are reawakened. One looks up old history books, and pooling it all, it is amazing what a good picture one can get of the holy family in Egypt! The most striking part of this story will be when it comes to the religion of the Egyptians. The books say that at the time of Christ the religion of the Egyptians had deteriorated into worshiping animals: crocodiles, snakes, birds, cows, cats, and rams, if they were born of one solid color. The books also say that many Jews had settled in Egypt, and in the big cities like Alexandria, Heliopolis, or Memphis, the population was about two-thirds Jewish. In Heliopolis there was a Jewish colony. That’s where the holy family found refuge. Now they were in the true sense of the word “displaced persons” with no plans of their own, waiting to see what would be done with them. “Remain there,” the angel had said, “till I tell you” (Matt. 2:13).

  “If-ing it,” or “perhaps-ing it” means, in our family, trying out different possible ways of how it might have been. “Perhaps,” therefore, Joseph used the gold of Melchior to rent a house and get the necessary things to set up a humble household — this was never to be a home; this would always be exile.

  Now Joseph would find himself work, and Mary would keep house. They were not rich enough to afford a baby sitter, so whenever she went shopping in the bazaar, she would take her little boy with her. It is perfectly possible that many a time she must have witnessed how the street crier came along making room for a sacred cow or a sacred cat, ordering everyone prostrate in the dust. Of course, Mary would never obey this command. The people would curse the Jewish swine, as they used to say in mockery, because the Jews did not touch any pork. There she stood pressed against the wall until the animals had slowly passed, holding by the hand Him who would someday exclaim, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). John also said “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (John 1:10–11). Even if they were out of immediate danger from Herod, it must have made them very bitter to see how far the people around them had drifted away from God.

  According to ancient tradition, the holy family went from Heliopolis to Memphis and stayed there for the rest of the time. There those things must have happened which make the heart of every young mother warm with joy. At His mother’s knee little Jesus would begin to talk and sing little songs. From her He was learning His first prayers and listening to His first stories. Now there is no end of “perhaps-ing.” Which were His first words, which the first prayers, and what kind of stories? This depends a little bit on the question of how long the holy family stayed in Egypt. The fathers of the church are of different opinions. Bonaventure believed that they stayed in Egypt as long as seven years. Then the stories would most certainly be all those beautiful Bible stories, which in His case were at the same time family history. In the young heart would awaken homesickness for His Father’s house, where the mother had dwelt for many years, and which she could describe so wonderfully. Like every refugee child, He would grow up on the stories of how it was in the “old country,” which He himself could not remember because He was too small at the time of flight, but which filled His little heart with nostalgia.

  Besides all hardships and all the nostalgia, there is one more emotion which fills the refugee’s heart, and that is deep gratitude to his or her hosts for their hospitality. He wants to repay in whatever small measure he can. Christ repaid Egypt in His own inimitable hundred-fold ways: in the course of time its cities would be filled with bishops and saints, the wilderness around would swarm with the fathers of the desert. John Chrysostom would say of the Egypt of his own time in the fourth century: “And shouldst thou come now into the desert of Egypt, thou wilt see this desert become better than any paradise, and ten thousand choirs of angel in human forms, whole nations of martyrs and companies of virgins, and all the devil’s tyranny put down while Christ’s Kingdom shines forth in its brightness.”

  Every refugee is just living for the day when he can return home. Finally the glorious moment arrived when “Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel” (Matt. 2:19–21).

  Upon this, invariably, one of the children will ask, “Why again at night? Why arise and take the child and His mother? Couldn’t they just leave normally like any other travelers, join a caravan and have it a little easier?” Well, this is one of those questions to which we still have not found an answer.

  One of our children asked once, “Mother, if the three holy kings had to leave the same night, couldn’t they have taken the holy family on their camels? Don’t you think they would have enjoyed doing this, and just think how much easier for Mary and Joseph!” It had never occurred to me before, but it was a good suggestion, and there was no question of how they would have liked to do this. At least one of them had to go in that direction anyhow. The one from Ethiopia had to pass through Egypt to go home. The only answer is that the other was the will of the Heavenly Father.

  How lighthearted they must have been on the long and hard journey back, reciting over and over again, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Ps. 122:1). They were heading for Bethlehem. It might not be impossible that on one of these days the thought occurred to Mary that her little Jesus would have no playmates of His own age. The boys in Bethlehem would be either a little older or a little younger than He. Toward the very end of the trip, however, Joseph got another one of his nightly messages: he should not go to Bethlehem in Judea because the successor of Herod was not much better than Herod himself. Instead, he should go into Galilee. So they chose the hometown of the mother and went to Nazareth and settled there.

  In 1938 and 1939 the Trapp family made two trips to the United States following their flight from Austria. Here they are in October 1939. Top row (left to right): Werner and Rupert. Middle row: Father Wasner, Johanna, Maria with baby Johannes, Georg, Hedwig, Martina, and Maria. In front: Agathe, Rosmarie, and Eleonore.

  Chapter 10

  “Unless You ... Become Like Children”

  A grave injustice is done to this family from Nazareth if we do not take them as real people; persons like you and me, completely alike in everything — except sin. For most of us, isn’t Jesus — and I mean now humanly speaking — some kind of superman? And Mary, well — she is a myth, something of the same kind, very much to be admired but definitely not someone whom you would take into your home, whom you would ask to live with you, no more than you would invite a member of foreign royalty. You would feel too awkward, too uncomfortable. All the ease would be gone from your home, as if one couldn’t smoke or relax in a chair in their presence; make small talk about the household, the high prices of nowaday
s, the threatening danger of war, as long as they are around. What a great, great pity, and how very wrong! Still — isn’t this the way it is with the majority of Christians nowadays? And why? Only because we don’t know them.

  What do we know, for instance, about the so-called “hidden life”? I dread this very expression “hidden life,” because these two words seem to have had a strange influence on us. Most of the 30-some years of the life of Christ is covered by this expression which we have learned to accept as fact. Just because the Gospels don’t say a word about what was going on in the holy family, we deprive ourselves of living His whole life with Him. The years of His childhood until He became of age as a “son of the law,” the years from 12 to 20 when He had reached majority in His tribe, the precious years from 20 to 30 when He was a grown-up man like those in our families. But we people of today cannot do that any longer. There are books such as Bible encyclopedias in one volume or Mary the Mother of Jesus by Reverend Franz M. William or the books by Father O’Shea1 and others which will help us reconstruct the daily life of the holy family almost as easily as we might reconstruct the daily life of our great-grandmothers.

  Luke says, “They returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:39–40). And because nothing spectacular happened until He was 12 years old, there isn’t anything more said but that they returned to Nazareth. The evangelist might have felt foolish if he had gone into an exact description of what they did there day by day, year after year, because all his contemporaries knew that anyhow; and if we don’t know it any more, it’s our own fault. It is only due to lack of interest, to the greatest sin of all, indifference. When we are interested enough, we know how and where to find information on, for instance, how the pharaohs in Egypt lived, just exactly how they embalmed their mummies, and how the aborigines live in Tierra de Fuego. It takes just as much effort to find out about the customs of the Holy Land at the time of Christ. For instance, if we don’t know which daily prayers were said in the holy family, how the Sabbath was observed, what the school system was like at that time in the Holy Land, what the position of the mother was in the house — well, then we must soberly admit that we are more interested in the pygmies and the old Egyptians than in the daily life of our Lord.

  Indifference was the sin which hurt our Lord most, and with which He was most impatient: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15–16).

  If we are not in a position to know for ourselves one complete day in the holy family from dawn to dusk, or one week from Sabbath to Sabbath, or one year with the major feasts and pilgrimages to Jerusalem, if we don’t know down to details the political situation of our Lord’s country and people during His own time, if we don’t know the mountains and valleys, the cities and villages and what they looked like, the change of seasons, the flowers and animals — if we don’t know this, then we have to admit with a sorry heart that we have sinned gravely through indifference. And there is only one thing to do: get to work right away.

  Very soon the hidden life will not be hidden at all. We see Mary busy in her household from morning till night, starting out early at dawn carrying the day’s supply of water from the well into her house in an earthen pitcher on her head. After that we see her grinding the day’s portion of meal and baking their daily bread, taking a broom and sweeping the house, preparing the meals, spinning flax and wool, and weaving undergarments, tunics, and mantles, one for the Sabbath and holy days, another one for every day. And when we learn in detail how these were done — very soon we shall lose this notion that Mary spent her life with eyes raised and hands folded in prayer. She will become a woman of flesh and blood, a mother and housewife; and very soon we shall find ourselves talking things over with her, things which pertain to household and children, the elements of women’s talk all over the world. And by “talking things over,” we shall have started out on a new life of prayer hitherto unknown to us. We might never use the word “contemplation,” but we shall experience the fact that enough meditation automatically leads to quiet contemplation. Not only will Jesus and Mary not be strangers any more, they will really become members of our household, more so perhaps than some of our very own relatives, an uncle or an aunt whom we don’t see very often.

  Let us start out right away. “They returned into Galilee, to their city, Nazareth.” This return may not have been of unmixed joy. Nazareth was a provincial town where everybody knows everybody. Mary and Joseph had left it years ago. Now they came back with the little boy, a few years old. Don’t you think all the neighbors would want to know where they had been and what they had been doing all the time?

  “In Egypt? No, not really! But why?” Small town gossip was waiting for them.

  Then the daily life began with Joseph, the father of the house. In the eyes of men it was Joseph, Mary, Jesus, while in the eyes of God it was Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Joseph opened his carpenter shop and began to work for his livelihood. In his workshop he made implements like plows, pieces of furniture such as chests and low tables. He also went out putting roofs of cedar beams on houses. One thing he never, never did — he never made a cross.

  This was the most hated gallows which the Romans had brought into the country. While Joseph was busy at this craft, Mary, the “good wife …puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle…. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness” (Prov. 31:10–27).

  What was Jesus doing when He was seven, eight, nine, ten, years old? He was watching His mother and foster father, and very soon He would imitate them. Soon He would find out that on one day in the week there was a completely different atmosphere around the house. This Holy Day began early the night before. It lasted from sunset to sunset. The workshop would be closed, they would wear their Sabbath clothes, the mother would not cook, but they would eat what she had prepared the day before. The house was especially carefully swept and cleaned.

  It was the duty of the mother of every house to light the “Sabbath lamp.” Jesus would see His mother do it in her inimitable reverent, loving way, spreading out her hands before the lamp, pronouncing the benediction: “Blessed art Thou, oh Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments and command us to kindle the Sabbath lamp.” Then as long as the boy was small, He would see Joseph leave with quick steps and later on return in a markedly different way, slowly and thoughtfully. His mother would explain to Him that the rabbis had pronounced this as the way to go to and from church, as we would say.

  The food was what we would call a Sunday dinner. Aren’t we interested in finding out what they ate, how it was prepared, and how it was served? If we look at our map, we see Nazareth not very far from the big lake. We know that there were many fishermen. Fish was eaten much more than meat, especially in a small family. A levitical law commanded the eating of a whole animal at once. That is why lambs, kids and calves, eggs, and cheese were preferred to beef. Besides, meat was expensive, and the holy family, as we still remember from their behavior in the temple when they couldn’t afford the lamb, belonged to what we would call the middle class — not rich and not destitute. They were poor, but not to the extent of misery. Mary and Joseph always made ends meet. But there were no luxuries around.

  The workshop must have been a child’s paradise for the little boy. What grand toys there were just lying around on the floor!

  Then one day He must have begun to accompany His mother to the well. There He heard the women greeting each other with the beautiful word shalom (peace). This well still exists. We can show pictures of it to our children.

  Jesus was a healthy, normal boy. As such, He would want to play with other boys. The time would come when He would be allowed to go out with them and explore the neighborhood.

  And He had to
go to school. That was commanded by law. The rabbis even forbade the people to settle in a place where there was no school! School was usually connected with the synagogue in Nazareth. Only the boys went to school, and there they learned to read, but not to write. They were taught two books — the Torah, which is known to us as the Law of the Old Testament, and the Mishnah, a commentary to it, the teachings of the famous rabbis. The little boys sat on the floor in a small circle before their teacher, who would teach them first orally by saying a sentence and having them repeat, repeat, repeat. After they really knew it by heart, then he showed them the script. This was so much the method of the day that the verbs “to teach” and “to learn” were identical with the verb “to repeat.” The little ones were not only taught the verses of Holy Scriptures, but they were also taught practical things like behavior, moral conduct, and etiquette. And so, Jesus went to school, like my Johannes and your Tom or Jim. And Mary and Joseph were just as anxious as you and I as to whether He made progress, and He always did.

  Luke says, “And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” The same Luke who said now the child was “filled of wisdom,” would say on the next page that He “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Here we come upon something which we cannot explain by mere study of history, geography, or sociology. Here we come across one of the deepest mysteries of our religion, something which is a divine secret and would never have been found out by men if it hadn’t been for divine revelation.