When you are going through something hard and wonder where God is, remember the teacher is always quiet during a test.”
-Anonymous
In 1632 the Bubonic Plague that had swept through Europe finally made its way to the little village of Oberammergau, 50 miles south of Munich in Bavaria. The inhabitants had quarantined themselves, but a farmer who had been working in another town sneaked back home and within days 20 percent of the villagers were dead.
It was said that you could have lunch with your friends and dinner with your ancestors, so fast did the disease take its toll. Every family lost someone, and other families were wiped out completely. Fear held every person in its grip, and today as we face a pandemic in our own time we can understand a little of how these villagers felt. We look up to the heavens with questioning eyes. Families are losing loved ones, businesses have closed their doors, and it seems like everything we hold dear on earth is at risk.
At the height of the slaughter, the community met at the parish church and solemnly promised to put on a passion play to honor the sufferings of Christ in perpetuity if they were delivered from the pestilence. That was 388 years ago. Now, at the beginning of every decade the play has been performed in an open-air theater seating 4,700.
On Ash Wednesday of “every year that ends in a nine,” the townspeople cum actors stop shaving their faces and cutting their hair in preparation for the roles they are to play the next year. Only those born in the village or have lived there for 20 years can take part in the play, and roles are handed down from generation to generation. The play involves nearly half of the village’s 5,000 residents in the production and draws roughly half a million visitors for its 102-performance run–which will undoubtedly be postponed this year.
The people of this village know first hand that God is with us during our most difficult tests, and postponement or not, every 10 years the villagers will perform their play because, you see, after they made their promise to God in that small parish church not another villager died of the plague, and those already infected recovered.
So pray and have faith. If God is with us, who can stand against us?
Jim
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