Blue Skies, Hidden Lives, Unvisited Tombs

The day dawned under a sheet of gray, with the clouds in the east giving way to the sun, as if a long florescent tube had been flicked on just beyond the mountains. Jinx cavorted in the snow and carried chunks of ice around as if they were prizes beyond compare. The roosters one farm over called to the brightening sky as I crunched my way past, and the breeze was slight enough that my face was not numb when we reached home.

While drinking our coffee, Mrs. Orr and I finished watching a movie we’d started last night. The movie was A Hidden Life, directed by Terence Malick, and is the true story of an Austrian farmer named Franz Jagerstatter, who was executed in 1943 for refusing to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.

Like all of Malick’s films, A Hidden Life is gorgeously filmed, the camera swooping across landscapes and following the characters as they move through their rural lives. The soundtrack by James Newton Howard (augmented by pieces by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and other classical composers) is majestic and mournful, a fitting compliment to the poetic images on the screen.

The plot follows the life of Herr Jagerstatter as he raises his daughters with his devoted wife Fanni on their farm in Austria. Although he reported for basic training when summoned by the Third Reich, Jagerstatter refused to swear loyalty to Hitler out of a sense of deep Catholic piety and a growing unease with what he knew of the war and Germany’s role in world events. His moral stand cost him everything. His village ostracized him, shunned his wife and children, and refused to help his family in any way while he was incarcerated. His priest and bishop pushed him to take the oath out of expediency, as did high officials at his military tribunal. In spite of overwhelming pressure and poverty, Frau Jagerstatter supported her husband through the ordeal. She was able to visit him in Berlin just before he was sentenced to death. In August of 1943, Jagerstatter was executed by guillotine. His widow was refused a pension until 1950.

I remember skim-reading Thomas Merton’s Faith and Violence some time ago, but I do not recall the chapter on Jagerstatter, which I learned of today while reading about Jagerstatter’s life. Jagerstatter was declared a martyr of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, and he was beatified later that year, his feast day being the date of his baptism on May 21, which is shortly before St. Joan of Arc’s feast day.

A Hidden Life is a beautiful film but is also a very difficult film to watch. There are no scenes of overt brutality, but the inner struggle of Jagerstatter and his wife against exterior pressure and their own inner doubts and conflicts was wrenching, and quite convincing as portrayed by August Diehl and Valerie Pachner.

About two-thirds of the way through watching the movie, my wife looked at me and said, “Do you agree with him? Would you do what he did?”

I paused the movie and we had a short but intense discussion about the effects and implications of the stand Herr Jagerstatter took. Turns out we had both been thinking about something in particular. There exists a very strong likelihood that I will at some point be required by my employer to submit to the Covid vaccination. I have already determined that I will not take this vaccine. Not only was the vaccine (which stands to clearly “help” one and only one group: big pharmaceutical companies) rushed through and never rigorously tested, not only do we know nothing about long-term effects of the vaccine, and not only are we being urged to submit to it by a government which has dramatically demonstrated its evil and untrustworthiness, but the vaccine is manufactured using murdered unborn children.

So the Orrs may very well be in a situation similar to the Jagerstatters. Go along in order to get along, or take a stand and suffer the disapproval of family and the loss of livelihood. Surely we are not the only family wrestling with these questions and these fears.

Just before the end credits rolled, a quote from George Eliot’s book Middlemarch, from which Malick took the title of the movie, was displayed on the screen. The words are somber and haunting and worth meditating upon.

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Many of us may be required to make difficult decisions in the coming weeks and months. May God grant us grace and peace of soul as we move through our daily lives and watch for signs of His love and presence.

~ S.K. Orr