In the afternoon of Palm Sunday they were taken out into the fields. Each meadow or field or wood patch got its own; on each stick was fastened a small bottle with holy water, and the family went around distributing them while they said the rosary together. Thus the blessing of the Church was brought to the meadows, where the cattle would graze; to the fields, where the grain for the daily bread would ripen; to the woods, where the beams for the house and the boards for table and bed were growing, to protect them against “the snares of the Enemy”: flood, hail, and fire.
Most of these ceremonies and customs as old as Christianity were new to Georg and mostly also to the children. How wonderful it was to travel into that land of wonder with them. At no other time does the Church display the whole splendor of her liturgy as she does around Easter, and who can appreciate any pageant so without restraint and inhibitions as a child?
Every morning we walked to the Cathedral a little ahead of time to get a seat in the front pews.
Then comes Holy Thursday. How happily it starts. The huge organ gives all it has, and so do the choir and so do the musicians: violins, trumpets, horns, as if they all tried to praise and thank Our Lord for the institution of the Blessed Eucharist, because this is its anniversay. But suddenly a shadow falls upon the festive mood: the Church remembers that on that same Holy Thursday Our Lord started His bitter Passion. He was betrayed by one of His disciples and abandoned by the rest of them, and when He was sweating blood in Gethsemane because His anxiety and fear had become so unbearable, there was nobody to wipe His face because even His three best friends had fallen asleep. In remembrance of this the Church becomes sad. She silences the organ and the musicians, and the choir goes on singing alone, bewailing compassionately the fate of the Master. At the end of Holy Mass the Blessed Sacrament is carried in solemn procession to a side altar. There it is locked into a tabernacle as Jesus was locked up in a cold and dirty dungeon for the rest of this terrible night. But now the people want to make up for all the horror and lonely suffering. This altar is flooded in candlelight and covered with flowers, and people come day and night to keep Him company in love and compassion.
The Gospel of Holy Thursday having told, after the institution of the Blessed Sacrament, the touching incident of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, finishes with these words: “If then I, being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
Therefore, the venerable old Archbishop, acting as Christ’s representative, taking off his gilded vestments, and dressed only in the alb, a long linen garment, kneels down humbly before twelve poor old men, washing their feet, drying and kissing them. “For I have given you an example that as I have done to you, so you do also.”
Of course, there is no school. The week of Easter holidays has begun on Wednesday, and in all the homes a feverish activity starts: spring cleaning. Only in one corner the artist of the family has closed his workshop, and violently refuses to let any broom or duster come near him: he is making Easter eggs. First, they are boiled in their colors: red, blue, yellow, green, and purple. After they have dried, magic things happen to them. You can erase patterns from the foundation color with certain acids. You can paint with oil paint flowers and birds and words, even little bits of music, on them. The words may even give slight indications as to whom this egg is going to belong. You can fasten little flowers, leaves, or herbs on the egg before you throw it into the hot color bath. When you take it out and remove the string, the shape of the flower or herb is clearly outlined. There is no limit to your imagination, and the master of this craft is an important person in the house during these days.
The evening meal is a solemn one. Before the place of the father stand filled wine glasses and a plate with small buns. He breaks the bun, makes the sign of the Cross over it, and taking with it a cup of wine, he hands it to each member of his household, and they eat and drink in His memory, standing, while the father reads the Gospel of the day. After that the family sits down and eats a roasted lamb, and it is all solemn and a little sad and still festive, like the morning in church.
When you come to church on Good Friday, you feel right away you are entering a house of mourning. The face and voice of your pastor tell you, bringing home in a half-hour sermon the tragic happenings of the first Good Friday: how the people had killed their Best Friend and Benefactor, their Lord and God; and why? Some out of jealousy; others, for hatred, or envy, or for fear of losing out in business, or even for mere ignorance and misunderstanding.
And you may bow your head and take a deep look into your innermost heart, feeling miserable and guilty and oh, so sorry. When the holy service is over on Good Friday, the Church wants to show outwardly: Christ is dead, buried in the tomb. Thus the altars are stripped of their linen, the candle holders are overturned, the doors of the empty tabernacle are wide open, the vigil light is extinguished. No flowers, no candles, no sound, only a large crucifix lying on the altar steps, and the people come in and kneel in silent adoration, and then bend to kiss the wounds of the Lord.
But in Austria and in other Catholic countries there is still a side chapel of the church where there is seemingly great activity. This is the Holy Tomb. More or less elaborately an oriental tomb has been constructed according to the imagination of the local artist, and there one sees the figure of Christ resting in death. It is the ambition of the whole parish to make this resting-place a thoroughly beautiful one. Hundreds of potted plants are brought by the people, and hundreds of candles and blue and red vigil lights, giving testimony of the burning faith and love of the donors. A guard of honor is there always: two soldiers on each side presenting arms, two firemen in their best uniforms with shiny helmets and a stern look, two little boys, two little girls, two men, and two women, representing the civil and military elements of the community, paying a double homage, keeping a watch at the tomb of their most beloved Friend, and adoring, at the same time, the One Who said: “I will be with you till the end of time” because high above the tomb on a little throne stands the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance, covered with a transparent white veil.
As a child you live through these days in an exalted state of mind. They are not like any other ordinary Thursday, Friday, Saturday; and young as you may be, your little heart is shattered by these tremendous mysteries you help to celebrate. When you come back from your visit at the Holy Tomb, you don’t feel as if you were coming from your parish church. You have just been in Jerusalem and Calvary and in that garden where they laid Him into the sepulchre. You can’t put it into words, but there is no need for the grownups to tell you; you don’t feel like yelling around anyhow.
Then comes Holy Saturday. Right away you feel a different atmosphere when you come near the church. In front of it is a pile of wood and people standing around with lanterns in their hands. These are the same peasants who walk for hours during the weeks of Advent to the frozen little church. The door of the church opens, and the priest comes out with the two altar boys and the sacristan. Under the breathless gaze of the bystanders, the sacristan succeeds finally in getting a spark out of a stone and thus lighting the woodpile. This morning it has to be a God-made fire which the priest is going to bless, not an artificial one which people have caught and captured in the form of a match.
From this blessed holy fire, the Easter Fire, the priest lights the three candles on the triangle, the symbol of the Holy Trinity, and carries it into the church, singing jubilantly: “Lumen Christi!” (“Light of Christ!”) while everyone answers: “Deo Gratias!” (“Thanks be to God!”)
Now the church is not dark any more. She has her light back, Christ the Lord. Today the church seems to try hard to restrain her joy and happiness, remembering all the time, it is only Saturday. The choir starts a cappella and in minor chords, but finally her anticipation of the great Easter glory is overpowering, and she bursts forth into the cry of triumph which goes back through the millenniums: “Alleluia, Alleluia!” Now there is no holding the mus
ic back any longer. There is the organ with all its might and power, there are the trumpets and horns, and the high voices of the violins, and all the bells in the steeple and all the little bells in the church join the human voices in one big, victorious “Alleluia!”
Little children who still believe in the Easter rabbit and the mystery of the Christmas tree being brought from heaven have been told that on Holy Thursday all the bells fly to Rome, where the Holy Father the Pope blesses them, and on Holy Saturday they travel back to the places where they belong, freshly blessed.
You would have to be unconscious, should your heart not feel at least some of the happiness of the victory of light over darkness—life over death. Whatever troubles and sorrows may overshadow your own path, they have become lighter today—thus you have been a witness to the ultimate victory: Christ is risen—also in your own life. “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!” In solemn procession the Blessed Sacrament is carried from the Holy Tomb out of the church through the streets and adjoining valleys to make known to all mankind the message of the great “Alleluia!” This procession turns into a real and veritable pageant: everybody is wearing his new spring clothes. This is the moment where the wintry felt is exchanged for the straw hat. The soldiers, firemen, the war veterans, the little children, everybody wearing his best, help thus to congratulate their Lord. The youngest and the oldest heart is filled on that day with that wonderful confidence: if He was victorious, we shall be so one day, too, because He said so.
Christianity nowadays is like a big household where many cousins live under the same roof. They all belong to the same clan, but at times they have very different ideas about how to run their family affairs.
Some of them, for instance, have no use for any outside devotion. God is a spirit, and He wants to be worshipped in spirit only, they say. Consequently, they have dispensed with all liturgy. They don’t want any distracting ceremonies, no incense, no vestments, no music, no pictures and images, not even sacraments—only the service of the spirit.
The trouble is, however, that as long as we live here on earth, we simply are not pure spirits, but we have also a body, and in that body, a very human heart; and this heart needs outward signs of its inward affections. That is why we embrace and kiss the one we love; and the more we love, the more ardently we press him to this very heart—somehow it seems as if these cousins had overlooked that fact. But you can’t cheat the heart; it knows what it wants, and it knows how to get it. Therefore, we see how, besides the liturgy of the Church, another liturgy developed, consisting of the same elements. The vestments withdrew from the Church into the glee club performances with their wide-sleeved velvet gowns and quaint-looking birettas; the processions grew into the costly and gaudy pageants; even the ceremonies around the Pontifical High Mass found a substitute. On the throne, however, was not a bishop, but a pretty young girl, the May Queen, or Corn Queen, Orange Blossom Queen, or Potato Queen, who was crowned and honored.
Well, times change and so may ideas; but the human heart and human nature remain the same. It is very wise for us to remember that we are made of flesh and blood, and to know just when our bodies should fast and when our hearts should feast. And Easter is such a time!
When Sunday arrives, the biggest of all Sundays of the year, the hearts and the homes are ready for the great Easter joy; both have been cleansed from all dirt and dust in a spring cleaning, inward and outward. Long lines have filed before the confessionals in the church, and contrite hearts have sought forgiveness of their sins. Even the ones who are too busy during the year to come to confession, or too favorably impressed with themselves and can’t usually find anything to confess, even these obey that old call of the Church: “All the faithful shall confess their sins at least once a year, receiving reverently at Easter the sacrament of the Eucharist.”
We, too, had stood in line in front of the confessional, waiting our turn. Many times during the year had we been there under the choir loft in the dark, waiting to hear the consoling words: “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” But this was a different night. While we still stood in the dark, we could see how loving hands were busy transforming the House of God into a beautiful garden with shrubs and young trees, and flowers—flowers—flowers—wherein He could worthily celebrate the anniversary of His Resurrection this coming morning. It filled your heart with happy anticipation of the great Easter message: “My peace be with you.”
This morning, when the families walk to church, you see them carrying bundles large and small. On the Sunday of Sundays even the food which will be on the table later for a sumptuous Easter breakfast is blessed. The father carries the big ham, the mother, the artistically baked Easter bread with raisins popping out all over, and the children are entrusted with the basketsful of Easter eggs and little dishes of salt. Before the solemn service of Easter Sunday begins, the priest pronounces a special benediction over the food. Thus provided with blessings for soul and body, the family returns from the Solemn High Mass. The grownups, who have observed the fasting, are full of anticipation of a good feastday meal, and the little ones want to know when the Easter rabbit is going to come.
“In the afternoon,” says the mother, and smiles. And sure enough, in the afternoon when they go out with little baskets through the garden, behind the barn, under the trees, hidden by a bush, there are the most beautifully adorned Easter eggs: painted ones, chocolate ones, some made of sugar or dough. Father and Mother have to come along on the Easter egg hunt. The mother, torn this way and that by impatient little hands, has to admire, and finally help out with her big apron when the baskets are already full. The father strolls leisurely behind them in his white shirtsleeves, the Sunday coat around his shoulders; while he listens to the outbursts of joy of his little ones.
His sharp eye catches sight of a little red spot at the edge of the wood over there. Oh, yes, that’s the blessed palm he put there himself a week ago; his glance goes slowly all over his little kingdom: the woodland, the meadows, the pastures, the fields, the barns, and the house, his wife, and his children—blessings wherever his eye reaches. And although he couldn’t put it into words like city people, so easily and gracefully chatting along wherever they go and stand, deep down in his soul he feels “that peace which the world cannot give.”
VII A Festival Summer and a Baby
SOON we started talking about the summer, what to do and where to go.
“I should love to take the older children to some of these exquisite concerts and operas,” I said. “After all, the whole world assembles here in Salzburg for the Festivals. Why don’t we take advantage of it, too?”
Georg was a little doubtful as to the true pleasure this plan would provide, but when he saw that I really wanted to attend the Festivals, he gave in with a somewhat mysterious smile, as if to say: “You’ll see….”
Salzburg was at that time a city of about thirty-five thousand people, nestled along the river between the mountains which crowded from all sides. The origin of this ancient place—Iuvavum—goes back to Roman times. It was Christianized as early as the fifth century. It had its catacombs and its martyrs. Later Saint Rupertus built the Benedictine Abbey, Saint Peter, and bade the monks do the same good job they had done all over France and parts of Germany in clearing the woods into tillable land, and likewise in clearing the hearts of the natives into fertile soil for the seed of the Gospel of Christ. Soon afterwards he called his niece, Saint Erentrudis, a Benedictine nun, and built an abbey for her on the hill above Saint Peter: Nonnberg. Around these two venerable places the city of Salzburg began to grow. The old part of the town hasn’t changed much as century after century left its mark. That’s why you meet Romanesque and Gothic churches, Renaissance palaces and Baroque chapels standing in harmony side by side. During the year it was a rather quiet town with everybody going about his own business but during the summer it changed all of a sudden into a metropolis of music. Elegant cars with license plates from all parts of the world passed slowly through narrow streets, and
you could hear as much English spoken when crossing the Staatsbrücke as Salzburg dialect. All the big people of the world of music assembled here: Toscanini and Richard Strauss, Lotte Lehman and Bruno Walter, and the whole place buzzed with activity. If you didn’t make reservations months ahead, it was next to impossible to get a room anywhere. The town put on its best dress: flags could be seen from all the official buildings, standards all along the bridges and all around the Festspielhaus, the festival auditorium, and the people on the street seemed to be in a holiday mood, too.
One morning at breakfast my husband said, looking through his mail: “A distant cousin of mine writes to ask whether we can put him and his family up for the Festivals. He hasn’t seen me for a long time, and he says he is longing to renew the old relationship. I didn’t know that he was so attached to me. That’s how easily you misjudge people,” he added regretfully.
The next day again, at breakfast, he whistled through his teeth.
“Now—not for your life could I tell you who he is, but here he writes black on white that he is the son of my college roommate’s oldest sister, and I never even heard of him. Isn’t it funny! He would like to come for the Festivals, too. Well, we have room all right.”
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers Page 8
