Yesterday, Today, and Forever (3 page)

Chapter 4

Silent Night, Holy Night

I come from Tyrol. This is the part of Austria with the highest mountains and the greatest number of woodcarvers. Woodcarving seems to be a talent that is inheritable. There are whole valleys where all the families carve. The favorite objects are the very end and the very beginning of redemption — the crucifix and the crib. Tyrol is the country of the Christmas crib. Every home and every church has such a representation of the Nativity, more or less elaborate, more or less artistic. But always the cave is freshly painted and meticulously clean, ox and ass look well-groomed, and the straw may even be a little gilded.

When one grows up among those “pretty” cribs, one easily forgets how different it must have been on that first Holy Night. Because there was a manger in the cave, it must have been used for animals, so the floor was littered with dung. Except for that manger, there was nothing in it perhaps but a little barley straw. The only fresh air came through the narrow entrance by which one stepped down into that dark, smelly hole. “To make oneself at home” was quite impossible. Joseph could only try to make Mary a little less uncomfortable by arranging the straw so that she could lean against the wall opposite the entrance, get some fresh air, and look up into the cold winter sky.

The Gospels don’t mention the ox and ass, without which every crib would be unthinkable, but Isaiah the prophet knew of them: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib” (Isa. 1:3; KJV). The Gospels also do not mention the cave directly, still, tradition very often supplements the Gospels. After all, didn’t John the Apostle say that the world itself could not hold the books that would have to be written if everything should be told in detail? And it is according to tradition of the very first centuries. Justinius the martyr, living in the generation after the Apostles, and after him Jerome, living in a cave outside Bethlehem himself for most of his life, reverently describes this cave of the Holy Night.

What may have gone on during these next hours of the most holy of all nights? “And while they were there,” says Luke (2:6–7), “the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.” And tradition adds that Joseph, who saw that the hour was at hand now for the young mother and who did not know that she wouldn’t need any aid, went over to Bethlehem to look for a helper among the women. Mary, however, was drawn in deepest recollection into God, and when she came out of ecstasy, before her lay her little child. With indescribable happiness she must have taken Him to her heart, and wrapped Him up against the cold. When Joseph returned, he found mother and child. Forgotten now was the anxiety of the last days, the crushing disappointment of the evening, the coldness of the hearts in Bethlehem, as well as the cold of the frosty winter night. In this cave there was only love and wonder and adoration. For “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us …we have beheld his glory” (John 1:14).

Chapter 5

Angels We Have Heard on High

Christ was born in Bethlehem, but the world didn’t notice. The world was asleep. “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5; KJV). Only a few miles away in Jerusalem the house of the Lord God was silent and dark. The priests of the Most High were asleep. Also, the king’s palace was dark. Herod was seeking relief from his pain in sleep. All the great ones in Israel, the scribes, the doctors of the law, the zealots, the Pharisees, and the Herodians — all were fast asleep. In the little town on the hillside where the family of David the king was gathered together, everybody was fast asleep. All those of the house and family of David had come, some of them from faraway places, to be enrolled as subjects of a foreigner. Now they slept, and didn’t know that their kinsman promised from of old was born in their midst in a cave because there was no room in their homes, in their hearts.

In faraway Rome, Caesar Augustus was also fast asleep. Little did he know how much his recent law had inconvenienced a humble couple somewhere near the border of the empire. And little would he have cared, had he known. Wouldn’t he have been astonished, though, had he learned that throughout the centuries millions and millions would come and go who would never have heard of him, the great Augustus, except in connection with the birth of this humble child!

All the great ones of this world were asleep, but in heaven was such rejoicing as had never been heard since the creation of the world. All those millions of souls, perhaps headed by Adam and Eve, thanked God in a thunderous chorus that their redemption was at hand. And the Heavenly Father wanted to congratulate His children on earth — was there no one awake to receive His messengers?

“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” Our Lord would pray on a later day, “because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25; KJV). And Paul would add one day: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen”(1 Cor. 1:27–28; KJV). The great teachers of the day, the rabbis of Israel, had declared the shepherds as “base” and “foolish,” the very lowest of the low, on the same level as the Gentiles, unclean before the law. And these shepherds were the only ones awake in Israel. “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8; KJV).

This was no ordinary flock they were watching. These sheep were not to be eaten by men, but they were destined to become sacrifices for God. At this time the priests of Jahweh were not only servants of God, but also extremely successful businessmen. They had managed to become the sole proprietors of the herds from which the sacrifices were chosen. Again, it is Josephus Flavius who mentions that at one Passover around 120,000 lambs were slaughtered. That gives a little idea of the size of the flocks, parts of which were grazing on the fields outside Bethlehem. “Behold the Lamb of God,” John the Baptist would exclaim later. And there the Lamb of God was born next to the lambs of sacrifice, the fulfillment next to the symbol. But it was the shepherds, not the owners, who would find out about Him first. “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them” (Luke 2:9; KJV).

This was not the first time that angels had been sent to men. Throughout the pages of the Old Testament we find it happening many times, but each single time when heaven and earth met, the reaction of earth was the same: “And they feared with a great fear.”

“We shall surely die, because we have seen God,” cried the father of Samson (Judg. 13:22; KJV) because an angel had appeared to him and his wife. How did he know that it was not God Himself? And each time heaven would say to earth: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Each time except once. Once the great angel of the Lord was sent on a special mission into a small village tucked away in the hills, to a young girl, and this time when the natural and supernatural world met, it was different. The girl did not fall on her face, fearing she must surely die, and the first words of the angel were not “Fear not.” Only once did it happen that the angel of the Lord greeted one of the children of men, and this young girl did not say to the tremendous heavenly guest in the usual bashful way, “Oh, no, no sir, not you should greet me, but I have to greet you first.” No, she listened to the greeting, and then she only pondered in her heart what it might mean. For in this one case the angel of the Lord was greeting Mary of Nazareth.

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 all-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.