Passion and Pandemic: Oberammergau's Story
Passion and Pandemic: Oberammergau's Story
It’s a small village in the Bavarian Alps, but it has a testimony of Divine protection that has inspired the world. Oberammergau in 1633 was a place inhabited by a mere 600 souls when soldiers returning from the Thirty Years’s War brought with them the black death. Small isolated Oberammergau initially was able to protect itself from the plague by sealing itself off from the world – that is until a newly married villager, unable to find work, slipped past the guards. He returned with the bubonic plague. 84 people in the village died of it. That’s 14% of the population.
Gathering in front of the parish church, the villagers prayed for deliverance – and they made the Divine a promise. Standing in front of the church’s crucifix, which still hangs there today, they vowed that if God would stop the plague they would reenact the last week of Jesus’s life once every decade as a thank offering. From that day on, no one in the village died from the plague. In 1634 the first Oberammergau Passion Play was performed in an open meadow near the village. In 1680 they began to hold it at the beginning of each decade. That’s a promise they have kept for 388 years!
Though Pandemic travel restrictions forced the 2020 performance to be postponed, the cast is preparing for the rescheduled Passion play in 2022. It is a fitting reminder that our own times are not quite as unprecedented as they seem and that Divine help is still to be sought. When it comes we should be equally ready to carry on the testimony for the generations that follow us.
And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, And command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night. Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of every tribe a man: And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel: That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever. And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day.” – JOSHUA 4:1-9
