In Marius Gabriel’s novel which came out in 2022; Goodnight, Vienna, Gretchen is a 12-year-old girl living in Vienna in 1937. She struggles to read and write, but she can listen once to a piece of music and then play it perfectly on the piano. Gretchen’s caregiver is a medical student named Katya, who has come to Austria from her home in Glasgow. When the Nazis take over Austria, Gretchen is at risk of being sent to a medical research laboratory. Katya has to get Gretchen out of Austria.

After a series of dangerous adventures, they are befriended by a doctor who arranges forged passports for them to cross into Hungary. They agree to take his sister Shulamit with them — Shulamit is confined to a wheelchair because of curvature of the spine. Shulamit and Gretchen have struck up a deep friendship over their love of music — Shulamit realized immediately that Gretchen possesses a rare and precious talent.

All goes well until they reach the Hungarian border. Gestapo guards board the train and begin scrutinizing passports closely. They’ve been tipped off to look for a woman travelling with a 12-year-old child. The three are about to be arrested when, suddenly, Shulamit begins ridiculing the guards for not realizing she’s Jewish and claims she’s plotting to kill Hitler. The guards immediately march Shulamit off the train in her wheelchair, forgetting all about Katya and Gretchen.

Gretchen can’t believe what’s happened, but Katya says, “I think she planned to do that all along, if she saw you were in danger.”

Gretchen sobs, “I can’t even thank her.”

Katya replies, “I think she knows you will thank her with everything you do in your life.”

So how do we respond to the life that is sacrificed for us this Holy Week?

God believes that this broken, hurting, confused humanity is worth redeeming, and so takes on our humanity and gives his life that we might re-discover the holiness and love that dwells within us. As Shulamit gives her life that Gretchen may realize the promise of her life, we realize, in the passion and death of Jesus, the promise of our own lives: to realize God’s reign of peace and reconciliation. This Holy Week should leave us with a sense of awe and gratitude for what God has done — and our only fitting response is what we now do with the lives we have been given.