Yesterday, Today, and Forever (13 page)

That was true of the women as well as of the men in the company. All they needed, however, was the permission to stay with Him. He didn’t have to give them special rewards. He knew all they wanted was to be allowed to love Him and to show their love by providing for Him. What they did was quite unusual. Their contemporaries surely couldn’t have understood it. They were obviously from different walks of life. Some were noble ladies who would have left everything behind and would follow in His footsteps. This is the first real feminine movement.

Up and down throughout Galilee they followed Him and at the end they would be under the Cross. They would help to bury Him, and they would want to mourn at His grave. Little wonder it is, therefore, that after the Resurrection our Lord appears to the women. First, tradition tells us, to His mother, and then to Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9).

This is a true story as it is written down in the pages of history. Against the dark background of the position of women in ancient and modern paganism, Christ stands out as a figure of light. Mathilda Ludendorff, one of the leading names among the Nazis, wrote a book in which she tried to prove that Christ is only a myth, and His teachings only ancient wisdom from India plagiarized by the Gospels. Her husband, a famous name of his time, introduced this book with the following recommendation: “On the widespread reading of this book depends the liberation of the individual, of the German people, and of all peoples.” The title of the book was
Redemption from Jesus Christ
. And her sister in America has said it was undignified for women to follow Christ. Mary Magdalene, however, says in the name of all her sisters throughout the centuries, “ ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her” (John 20:18).

Chapter 18

“The Woman”

It was at the end of summer, and our music camp was just over. A few of our best friends had stayed behind to help us close up. The evenings we usually spent in my little house on the campus, sitting around in a circle, bay window-fashion, talking about “it.” “It” is spiritual life, which has many more aspects than there are evenings to talk them over.

Stanislaus, one of our seminarian friends, leaned back in his chair and said rather helplessly, “I don’t know what I can do. I have absolutely no feeling for Mary. Try as I may — I have read many books about her — she seems to me a perfect stranger. She is so completely unreal. That makes me so sad, but what can one do?”

We had spent so much time with the holy family in Nazareth, seeing the mother of the house as a real housewife, cooking, washing, baking bread, cleaning house, preparing and mending garments, and all the while mothering a little boy. Now we told Stanislaus all about it. How very, very real she was!

Then we came to talk about one of the most beautiful stories in all the Gospels, the one of the marriage feast in Cana in Galilee, when Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there. The gospel continues, “Jesus also was invited” (John 2:2). At that time He had not made a name for Himself yet. He and His disciples were obviously invited on account of His mother, to whose family the newlyweds must have belonged. Mary is usually described in word and picture as a rather shy, retiring person, clad in complete silence. The faraway look in her eyes indicates that she was pondering in her heart, which seems to make her oblivious to what is going on around her. All these artists of pen and brush seem to feel it a sacrilege to let her stoop down so low as the little trifles of everyday life. As the words of Holy Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Ghost, we can confidently take the story of the wedding of Cana as a most valuable aid to a true biography of Mary.

“When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him ...”(John 2:3). To appreciate what that means, we have to understand all the customs of such a marriage feast of her time, how the friend of the bridegroom was the steward who was also in charge of the wine, and who was most solicitous that everything should go as well as possible. It had escaped his attention, but it had not escaped her motherly vigilance. What really happened is this. Through the thoughtlessness of somebody, the wine was alarmingly short, which would amount to a great embarrassment for the hosts. Mary does not think this is a trifle too little to bother her Son with. As a real housewife, as a real mother, she foresees this painful situation.

She must have been up and around, coming and going, watching and seeing everything, and before anybody else, she anticipated the need and “did something about it.” How heartwarming! And again, how real and how close she becomes. When her Son in His answer, which does not sound encouraging to us, but didn’t disturb her a bit, calls her “Woman,” many people like Stanislaus wonder and don’t understand. So we mentioned that last day in Eden to Stanislaus, when God Almighty Himself gives her this greatest of all titles in His prophecy about “the woman” (Gen. 3:15).

And what authority she had! As was usually the case, the women belonging to the wedding party assembled at the house days ahead of time baking and preparing. Maybe Mary had taken over the leadership among them. With what natural poise she now steps over to the servants and commands, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). Perhaps the servants may have laughed outright at the funny idea of filling those huge stone jars with water at the end of a feast when there would be no more ablutions; but because of her words, they went back and forth many times with their pitchers, filling the jars. Doesn’t she still do the same thing today? Looking imploringly at us, she says, “Do whatever He tells you.” How can we refuse her pleading and not listen to Him when He says, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Stanislaus had already said repeatedly that this was all new to him, and it had never occurred to him in just that way. He seemed to grow happier and the tense, anxious expression on his face vanished visibly.

While we were telling and explaining, I got one of those fits against this degenerate sacred art of Barclay Street. How could a young man of our days get any access to a person represented in these doll-like faces, clad in pastel colors, whose lily-white hands seem only meant to be folded but couldn’t be imagined as kindling a fire or washing a little boy’s clothes or taking care of a carpenter’s household. It seems to me that heresies don’t absolutely have to be preached or printed; they can also be painted or carved in stone. These cute and sweet representations of Mary are a heresy widely spread.

And then we came to the end of the Gospels. We see Mary as a warm-blooded woman, mothering not only her own child but anyone who was in need. When it comes to the passion of our Lord, the Holy Ghost lets us have a look into the depths of her heart. “Did you not know?” her Son had said to her once when she hadn’t quite understood Him. That had been 21 years ago. In those years she had been pondering in her heart on everything He had said and done.

We see her now in the most cruel suffering a mother can endure: her Son caught like a criminal, betrayed by one of His own, denied by one of His best friends, mocked, ridiculed, and treated with the utmost scorn, scourged, tortured, disfigured, and finally condemned to death. Mary knew what power as a mother she might have over human hearts, how irresistible she would be if she were to step up to Pilate who was wavering anyhow, how she could perhaps turn the fury of the multitudes into pity.

She understood. And while her heart was pierced by the sword, she kept silently in the background. Simon was allowed to help carry the cross; the women could show their grief so that He even stopped and addressed them — the mother could only exchange a silent look. Then when the Gospel says, “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother…. he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!” (John 19:25–26; KJV), it was the final approval of Jesus toward His mother. The prophecy was fulfilled. Here she stands: the woman.

Georg and Maria at home in Stowe.

Chapter 19

“Christ …Lives in Me”

In the beginning of the book I told you how it happened that we became interested in the life of Christ, in reconstructing it for ourselves as closely as possible, day by day, as it may have happened 1,900 years ago. Then in the next chapters I tried to tell how we did what we did by showing you some of our versions of the childhood story and the hidden life. Then I picked at random some of the countless aspects of our Lord’s personality through which He was observed when we read the Gospels together throughout the years, alone and with our friends.

Now I want to tell you about still another discovery which we made when we had already become quite familiar with our Lord. This happened when one blessed day we seemed to understand what Paul meant when he exclaimed, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8); and in another place: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). These two statements were linked with the tremendous statement the mysterious voice had made to Paul when he was still Saul, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). From that day on these words became the whole pattern for our life.

If
He can be identified with each one of us and
if
He is the same yesterday as today — then He just continues His very life in every one of us until the end of time.

It is a big moment when one realizes that. One feels like saying, “All right, dear Lord, here are my hands and feet, eyes and ears, my lips and my heart — they are Yours.” I suppose this is the first step toward the final goal: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

As soon as one becomes familiar with the fact that He is the same today as yesterday, one will meet Him constantly with His friends and stories. He really is the same. Nothing has changed. The Good Shepherd is still going after the lost sheep; the Father is still waiting for the Prodigal Son; Mary Magdalene is still sitting at His feet after He has freed her from seven devils.

It may be that not everybody will come across Mary Magdalene or the Good Shepherd in a drastic way. But as soon as we have awakened to what the words mean: “Jesus Christ …yesterday and today”; and as soon as we want to meet Him
today
, we can always find Him unerringly as Jesus, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). Once He would talk about the persecuted Christians of the first decade: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). This is true throughout the centuries. All we have to do is to learn to think about our fellow men in that term: “I am Jesus.”

There are those incredible stories which seep through the Iron Curtain, which tell us how He re-lives His whole passion, how He is again scourged and crowned with thorns, “Despised and rejected by men” (Isa. 53:3), crucified and pierced by the lance. And this is not just one story, there must be thousands like it now.

If they seem a little remote to us, let us look around and we might find Him in the same persecutions He had to endure by the Pharisees: in our high schools and colleges, in offices, in newspapers and magazines. If we just learn to look, we shall find Him, and again He says, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” As we look into the lives of our friends and neighbors, how much suffering do we find! And the great day will come when we discover the cross in our own life. Up to then we may have hated it, but on that glorious day we shall understand His words: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). On that blessed day we shall suddenly know that it is He Himself who wants to suffer in us, who wants to give us that greatest of all privileges: to help to “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24). This is a mystery as great as the Incarnation or the blessed Trinity. We shall never quite understand how it can be that we are called upon to co-operate in the work of the redemption, but so it is. We can only faintly understand it when we think of the Body of Christ, of which He is the head and we are the members. And this whole body is suffering throughout the ages until the measure of suffering is fulfilled.

What we once said of Mary and Joseph, how they are still going from house to house seeking shelter, we can now say of the Son of Man. He is still carrying His Cross, and we meet Him every day. Do we want to hold it with the scribes and elders, saying, “He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him” (Matt. 27:42), or translated into our language, “If there were a God, there couldn’t be this awful war. How can God allow so much unhappiness?”

Encountering Him TODAY, we may come across fantastic situations but, after all, hasn’t His whole life been full of such fantastic events, and haven’t we discovered that His life is going on in our very days? So don’t be astonished when, after you have studied the life of Christ in the land of Israel, you discover it again in Vermont, Chicago, New York, and other places.

Chapter 20

A Letter

Stowe, Vermont

April 1951

Dear friends:

It was the end of January 1951. Our Christmas vacation was over, and the great blue bus came from New York to get us for our concert tour to the West Coast. There was the usual hustle and bustle of stowing all the many things into the bus, this time even a baby crib for Werner’s little Barbara. There was the running back and forth with the last-minute errands. There was Dave blowing the horn and shouting “All aboard!” and when the bus finally rolled out of the courtyard, there was Martina standing on the porch next to her husband Jean, waving, half-happy, half-sad. This was the first time she would not be with us in all those many years of singing. That was sad. But when we came back from the West Coast at the end of April, there would be a little baby lying in the cradle upstairs. Martina had brought this old, wood-carved cradle along from Salzburg this past summer, and now she was fixing it for her first child. So this was a farewell with a tear and a smile.

Four weeks later we drove into one of those large, modern motor courts in Wasco, California. It was a Sunday night, the end of February. We had had an afternoon concert, after which we had driven on to the next concert town, and now we would have a quiet Sunday evening together. This and the fact that we all prefer these beautiful motor courts to any hotel put us in the best of spirits. The man at the desk in the office said that a long-distance call was waiting for us. When he said, “You should call Operator 14 in Morrisville, Vermont,” we knew the call came from home. It must be something very urgent.

We placed a call, and very shortly afterward, the operator said: “Here is your party; go ahead.”

And a voice at the other end sobbed into the telephone, “Mother — Martina is dead.”

This is one of those moments where the heart actually seems to stop, and everything around one disappears in darkness.

The connection was not good, and all we could understand was that the baby had started to come four weeks too early, but the doctor was glad, because it was large. Martina was in the hospital. Everything went fine at the beginning until complications arose which made it necessary for the doctor to suggest an operation. The baby died right after it was baptized. Martina seemed all right. The operation was over, the doctors were gone. Martina was just beginning to wake up from the anaesthetic, when all of a sudden, her heart stopped. And could we come home now, please?

Meanwhile, the family had gotten settled in their different cottages, getting ready for a quiet Sunday evening. Now I had to tell them. I sent little Johannes around with the message that everybody should come immediately to cabin #6.

We knelt down and prayed, all of us numb and still without understanding what that meant: Martina is dead.

Now we had to attend to practical matters: airplane tickets to Burlington. Dave, who was deeply shocked, went to the telephone and returned soon with the unexpected news: “Every space is taken. They can put you on the waiting list. The earliest chance will be in three days.” That meant we had to give up the idea of all of us going home.

But I implored Dave, “Please try to get at least one seat for me.” After hours of anxious waiting, one seat was secured, leaving Los Angeles at eight o’clock the next morning. But we were far from Los Angeles. I had to drive 50 miles to the next airport, from where a plane would take me at two o’clock in the morning down south. When I was getting ready to leave, the family gathered around me handing me letters “for Martina,” as tears streamed down their faces. Father Wasner and Dave went along to the airport. Then — a last goodbye, a last blessing, and I was alone. There was a long night and a long day until the plane got into LaGuardia Field. One of our close priest friends was waiting for me.

“The connecting plane to Burlington has left already, and you have to stay overnight in New York. But tomorrow we shall come with you.” I was deeply touched and very grateful in Martina’s name when I learned that six priests would attend her funeral.

The closer the moment came when I should meet Jean and Pierre and Therese (Jean’s brother and his wife) and Martina, the more I dreaded it. But when I finally stood at her side, looking down on her beautiful face, I felt a strange peace coming over me, which seemed to emanate from Martina. There she was lying where her father had lain before in our big living room in her wedding dress with an imperceptible, tiny smile around her lips. At her feet in a small white coffin slept little Notburga, her child.

And then we sat together, Jean and I, holding each other’s hands. There was not very much to tell. The doctors didn’t know themselves. Martina, who had never been sick in all her life, had been well to the very last moment. The doctors didn’t even think that it was an embolism. They just frankly didn’t know. A caesarian operation is usually nothing to worry about nowadays. It is being done successfully all the time.

“God wanted her,” Jean said quietly. After a long silence he added, “She was too good to live very much longer. I had had that feeling often lately. She is in heaven.” Poor Jean. He had been so happy, and now, in an instant, he had lost wife and child.

Then we had to attend to practical matters. Jean said, “Mother, let’s do everything ourselves. I know Martina would want it that way.” His two brothers, Pierre and Jacques, went out to the graveyard to dig the grave. First they had to clear away six feet of snow, which was lucky in a way, because the soil under so much snow was not frozen very deep. The end of February is still deepest winter and very cold in Vermont.

Jean and Martina had been helping Wayne, the carpenter, during the last weeks, finishing the new wing, and Wayne, like everybody else, had grown very fond of Martina and was, like everybody else, also deeply shocked. Jean asked Wayne now to make a coffin for Martina in old-world style out of white pine boards with a big cross on the lid, the cross stained dark. The funeral was set for Thursday at ten o’clock. I sent a telegram to the West Coast, where I knew that ten anxious hearts were waiting for news: “OUR DEAR MARTINA AND HER LITTLE NOTBURGA WILL BE BURIED THURSDAY TEN O’CLOCK.” I knew they would sing a requiem at the same time in California as we would in Stowe.

Telegrams and letters came, and flowers started pouring in, and friends arrived. There was always someone with Martina. Prayers were said in French, in German, in English. In spite of the bad road on our hill and of the bitter cold, people came from all around. The telephone rang constantly with people from the village offering their cars, their help. It was a great comfort in such bottomlessly sad hours to feel such compassion. In the evenings the living room was filled. During the day we gathered a couple of times in the bay window, looking over at Martina, rehearsing the Requiem High Mass. From a nearby college the choir had offered to sing it but — “Let’s do everything ourselves,” we had said. “Martina would like it better that way.” With the singing family way out in California, I was a little bit worried as to how it would go, but when Father McDonnell arrived, who is choir director in his seminary, all was well, and I was sure Martina would like it.

On Wednesday Rupert came with Rosmarie, who had stayed with him, helping him around the house and with the children. Now there was at least one brother and one sister with Martina. With Rupert also came Anne Marie, one of his sisters-in-law.

In the evenings Father McDonough, our pastor, came over and gave a little talk on the liturgy of a Christian burial, which is so very consoling, and how the first Christians had looked at death. Instead of mourning, they celebrated a feast, the birthday of their beloved one in heaven. Instead of expressing their sympathy, they congratulated the bereaved. Some of this spirit we could feel descending upon us more and more.

On Wednesday the coffin arrived. We put it on the table in the music room and lined it with fresh balsam twigs and flowers. In the evening after the last prayer was said, we all went in and, standing around the coffin, we said the Lord’s Prayer for the next one in our midst to die. This is an old Tyrolean custom, and it is a real
momento mori
. It makes one realize in a very straight-to-the-point way that one day it will be for us.

Friends kept coming until past midnight. This is the mercy of these days. There are so many arrangements to be made, so many things to be thought about, and that, too, is a great help. Pierre and Therese, who had been married with Martina and Jean on the same day, really outdid themselves in arranging everything “as Martina would like it.”

Jean dreaded the black hearse and was sure Martina would not like to be put in there, so Rupert and the others decorated our Jeep truck with carpets and evergreens. After a last prayer at Martina’s side, all the friends went to get their coats, while we placed Martina on her last bed of flowers and fragrant balsam, placing little Notburga in the arm of her mother, covering them both with the rich folds of her bridal veil. Then we went down the hill to the little wooden church, at the threshold of which Father McDonough awaited Martina. As we entered the church, we sang: “
Subvenite sancti Dei, occurrite angeli Domini….
” (Come, ye saints of God, meet us, oh angels of the Lord, take her soul and offer her to the presence of the Highest.) And now with the words and music of the Requiem we understood again what is meant by the words “Holy Mother Church.” No one can console like a mother, and no one can console and help better than this great mother of us all, the church. “Eternal rest grant to her, Oh Lord,” she says, “and may perpetual light shine upon her.”

When we left the church, it was snowing in big white flakes, and when we came to the cemetery, the little mound of fresh dirt next to the grave was covered with a white blanket.

At the same time, the rest of the family went into the Catholic church in Coalinga, California, thinking they would quietly, all by themselves, sing a requiem; but when they arrived, the church was filled. Word had gotten around. All the school children had come, and many other people. And so it turned out to be a manifold “
Requiem eternam dona eis Domine
” which went up to the throne of God. At such moments one feels suddenly that this is what we meant when we say in the creed, we believe in the communion of saints; when all these perfect strangers turn into sisters and brothers, co-members of the church militant, uniting in prayer.

After we had all filed past the open grave, we went back to the house. Everybody was half-frozen. A roaring fire was kindled in the fireplace, and hot lunch was served.

In the morning mail was a letter from a very dear friend, Reverend Father Abbot of the Trappists. It said, “We envy you your sorrow and Martina her heaven.”

As the snowstorm increased, many of the guests wanted to leave before it should be too difficult to get down the hill. I had to fly back the same night to San Francisco. Before leaving for the airport, I wanted to sit once more with Jean. He had been really wonderful all these days, so truly resigned to the will of God. Now he told me how Martina had used all the money I had sent her for her birthday two weeks before for Austrian relief packages. Jean said he would send all the baby things Martina had so lovingly prepared for little Notburga to Austria to be given to a very poor mother with the request to call the child Martin or Martina. That had been very hard to see — the nursery all prepared, the room next to their bedroom, with all those sweet little things lying around, waiting. I had been worried whether it wouldn’t be too much for Jean to look at it from now on, so I asked him with a heavy heart what he planned to do next. He said he would go home to Montreal with his mother for a few days, and then he wanted to work hard and long hours, and so he intended to help that famous garden architect who had made that beautiful rock garden in front of our house. Working with rocks for the whole day, he thought he might be able to sleep. I felt greatly relieved. I knew how terribly quiet our big house could be when everybody is gone. That matters very little as long as there are two of you, but when the beloved is gone, never to return, then one discovers what “alone” means. For this there is no real remedy, but prayer and work help us to carry this cross.

And then I was on my way back to California in the airplane, alone with my thoughts. When Martina had been a little girl, she had said time and again, “I don’t want to be grown-up ever. I always want to be little.” God had really granted her that wish — outwardly and inwardly. That showed most in her uncomplicated, childlike piety. “We should be so continuously grateful for what God has done for us that the least we can give Him in return is all,” she wrote once to Jean.

During the last years when I was quite sick, she had always taken care of me, spent weeks with me in the hospital and nursed me back to health, always patient, always cheerful, full of little surprises. A little bouquet of wild flowers, still wet with dew, picked at sunrise, or a handpainted little card, in which art she was a master. Once in those days she had confided to me that she was afraid to die. Now I had to think that God in His love and mercy had spared His child this last fright. He called her at the moment of her greatest happiness, when she expected to wake up and find her child in her arms. Now I tried to picture Martina’s real awakening, being greeted by her child, her mother and father and little sisters and brothers. In my prayer book is a card with the words of St. Jerome from a letter of consolation addressed to his friend, St. Paula, representing her dead daughter Blesilla as saying, “Dear Mother, if you desire my welfare, trouble not my peace and joy by your tears. You fancy perhaps that I am lonely, but I live in such good company. I am with Mary the mother of our Lord and the holy women mentioned in the Gospel. You pity me for leaving the world, but now it is I rather who feel sorry for you and all your family because you still linger in the prison of the flesh and daily have to contend with the host of enemies who are seeking to destroy you.”

And on another one are the words of St. John Chrysostom: “You complain that you suffer, having lost her who was the joy of your life. Listen, my good friend. Suppose you had given your daughter in marriage to some good and honorable man who went with her to a distant country and made her rich and happy. Would not her happiness soothe the grief you feel at the separation? How can you dare to weep and refuse to be comforted, since your child has been taken to Himself by God our Lord and King, and not by any earthly friend or relative?”