He told the jeweler about the woman who had been in church earlier that day. In our home in Vienna, my wife put it on the table” - and here he smiled - “only when the bishop came to dinner.” “Many years ago my wife - God rest her - and I owned such a cloth. “It is strange,” he said in his soft accent. One gentle-faced middle-aged man - he was the local clock-and-watch repairman - looked rather puzzled.
Many people told him that the church looked beautiful. After the service, the pastor stood at the doorway. It had been skillfully designed to look its best by candlelight. Then she went away.Īs the church began to fill on Christmas Eve, it was clear that the cloth was going to be a great success. “Perhaps these years of wandering have been my punishment!” The pastor tried to comfort her and urged her to take the cloth with her. “I have always felt that it was my fault - to leave without him,” she said. Later she heard that he had died in a concentration camp. They planned that he would join her as soon as he could arrange to ship their household goods across the border. Her husband put her on a train for Switzerland.
She explained that she was Viennese and that she and her husband had opposed the Nazis and decided to leave the country. “My husband had the cloth made especially for me in Brussels! There could not beįor the next few minutes the woman and the pastor talked excitedly together. “It is my banquet cloth!” She lifted up a corner and showed the surprised pastor that there were initials monogrammed on it. She took up a fold of the cloth and rubbed it between her fingers. The pastor smiled and started to tell her about the storm damage but she didn’t seem to listen. She rose suddenly and walked up the steps of the chancel. She looked up as the pastor began to adjust the great gold and ivory cloth across the hole. After a while she dropped her head and prayed. The woman sat down in a pew and chafed her hands and rested. A war refugee, her English was imperfect. She told him that she had come from the city that morning to be interviewed for a job as governess to the children of one of the wealthy families in town but she had been turned down. “The bus won’t be here for 40 minutes!” he called and invited her into the church to get warm. Just before noon on the day of Christmas Eve as the pastor was opening the church, he noticed a woman standing in the cold at the bus stop. Happily he went back to preparing his Christmas sermon. It completely hid the hole! And the extraordinary beauty of its shimmering handwork cast a fine, holiday glow over the chancel. He carried the cloth back to the church and tacked it up on the wall behind the altar. Then the pastor was seized with what he thought was a great idea. Who, today, had any use for such a thing? It was a magnificent item, nearly 15 feet long but it, too, dated from a long vanished era.
The auctioneer opened a box and shook out of its folds a handsome gold and ivory lace tablecloth. That afternoon the dispirited couple attended an auction held for the benefit of a youth group. The pastor looked at it and had to remind himself quickly, “Thy will be done!” But his wife wept, “Christmas is only two days away!” Sorrowfully the pastor and his wife swept away the mess but they couldn’t hide the ragged hole. However late in December a severe storm whipped through the river valley and the worst blow fell on the little church - a huge chunk of rain-soaked plaster fell out of the inside wall just behind the altar. They felt that with paint, hammer, and faith they could get it in shape. But the pastor and his young wife believed in their run-down church. Now the good days had passed from the section of town where it stood. Rich and poor alike had worshipped there and built it beautifully. Famous men had preached from its pulpit and prayed before its altar.
It happened to a pastor who was very young but his church was very old. But the story I like best to recall was not a miracle - not exactly. At Christmas time men and women everywhere gather in their churches to wonder anew at the greatest miracle the world has ever known.
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