The Spirituality of Maria von Trapp

In December, I wrote about Maria von Trapp and, in particular, her book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (1949), on which the famous musical The Sound of Music is based. Maria wrote several other books, which are also well worth reading. The family’s genuine and lived faith is beautifully shown through all of Maria’s writings, and it is certainly the foundation of the biographical book about which I previously wrote. 

The depth of their spirituality, however, really shines through in Yesterday, Today, and Forever (1975), in which Maria offers reflections on the life of Christ from her life experience. She intertwines reflections on various events in the life of Christ with her family’s reflections, through family conversation on each event’s meaning and how the Gospel stories relate to their experience. The Gospel comes alive for the reader, as his own experiences are seen in parallel, bringing home the fact that Christ truly is the same yesterday, today, and forever—and, therefore, His life and teachings, not to mention His salvific death and Resurrection, are relevant in every age. 

Though it is a short book, Yesterday, Today, and Forever is best digested one chapter at a time. Her method is much that of Lectio Divina, picturing oneself in the scene. The von Trapp family’s interest in delving into the life of Christ as a family was first sparked when they faced their own journey into exile, and Maria told her young daughter of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. In relating their 20th-century experience to that of the Holy Family in the first century, she weaves a connection between then and now. Along the same lines, Maria draws a parallel between the cause of their respective exile—Herod and Hitler.

It is not hard, then, to draw connections between past and present events. As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We can feel unmoored by the winds of change, but when we can anchor them to situations and circumstances in the past and, most importantly, when we keep Christ as our captain—He who is unchanging, as the book’s title, referencing Hebrews 13:8 asserts—weathering every storm seems possible. A book similar in style is When the King was Carpenter (1976), which is sometimes sold in a joint volume with Yesterday, Today, and Forever and called Let Me Tell You About My Savior.

In Maria: My Own Story (1972), she recounts more of her life, beginning with her birth and tumultuous childhood in Austria. As her first book recounts, the family toured the United States giving concerts for many years; my grandparents attended one of these performances on their honeymoon in 1943, as my grandmother wrote in her memoirs. (Paralleling Georg, who recounted his naval career in a memoir titled To the Last Salute: Memories of an Austrian U-Boat Commander, my grandfather, too, recorded his life and his naval career in an extensive unpublished memoir he wrote shortly before he died.) 

In 1942, in the midst of their busy life touring, the family bought property in Stowe, Vermont, and established their roots in the United States. Maria recounts the family’s singing camps, which were held near their property for over a decade. Participants would come for a ten-day choral camp, each day beginning with prayer in the chapel and including not only singing but time in the beautiful natural surroundings. In 1950, the von Trapp Family Lodge & Resort opened, and it is still in operation today under the leadership of Georg and Maria’s youngest child, Johannes von Trapp (now 87), and his children. The family’s home in Salzburg is, interestingly, also a hotel now. 

After the war, the family used their concerts to raise money and collect donations for those suffering the effects of the war in their Austrian homeland. The family’s relief work, which they began by sending food and clothing to those they knew back home, grew in scope after a plea from an American general stationed in Austria. The family then established Trapp Family Austrian Relief, Inc. to organize and carry out their efforts. For her Christian charity through this work, Maria was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by Pope Pius XII in 1949 and was made a Dame of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in 1952.

In later years, Maria and some of the children accompanied Fr. Wasner on missionary trips to the South Pacific, which she also tells of in Maria. From touring, to relief efforts, to singing camps, to international missionary work, Maria and her family put their faith into action. This is further seen in Around the Year with the von Trapp Family, reprinted a few years ago in a beautiful edition by Sophia Institute Press and sharing stories on how the family celebrated the Faith throughout the year, along with recipes, ideas for homemade gifts, and even musical compositions. While it was still out of print, my husband bought me an old copy, and “Maria von Trapp bread” became a favorite Holy Thursday tradition for my family. 

Of course, these are just the works written by Maria von Trapp. Many other books have been written about her, including Maria von Trapp and Her Musical Family, written for young readers as part of the Vision series by Ignatius Press. You can also listen to the Trapp Family Singers on various music-streaming platforms, and YouTube has an amusing clip of Maria von Trapp teaching Julie Andrews how to yodel.

Just as reading the lives of the Saints can help us on our faith journey, learning more about the lives of other virtuous if not canonized figures can also help and inspire us. For me, Maria von Trapp has been such a figure. I hope she will inspire many others as well.