Not so much on Fridays, but many Tuesdays when I am praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, I am taken back to another Rosary on another Tuesday. It was April 19, 2005, and the Cardinals had entered the Sistine Chapel for a fourth round of balloting. The assisting priests who were masters of ceremonies or confessors or, like me, personal assistants to cardinals, maybe a dozen of us, had retired to an adjacent chamber where security personnel managed their countermeasures. Once everybody was thoroughly briefed on what to do when The Moment Came, we settled down restlessly to wait.
This was our third session, and we had already discovered the limits of activities available to us. One possibility was to pace in the grand Sala Regia, with or without a rosary. Since nobody else was at this task in the moment, I started back and forth on the inlaid marble floors of that frescoed hall, now otherwise vacant, where the Popes, seated on a throne erected for the occasion at one end of the expanse, customarily would receive the corps of diplomats every New Year. Back and forth past the sealed doors of the Sistine Chapel, I prayed one of the most recollected and fervent rosaries of my life.
The Sorrowful Mysteries seemed supremely well suited to what transpired on the other side of that door, as one man underwent the agony of the call to the exalted burden of the Papacy while I thought of Christ’s Agony in the Garden. The Scourging at the Pillar seemed all too apt a herald of the reception he would face in the world from critics and unbelievers and false friends alike. The Taking Up of the Cross and the Death on the Cross both echoed clearly in the prospects of the prospective Pontiff, but it was the Crowning with Thorns that rang most vividly true that day, and the same Mystery that takes me back when I pray it in these days.
For the Crown with which the Pontiff would be crowned would be like the one imposed on Christ in his sorrowful yet glorious Passion. Not only because I knew that the then most likely candidate and soon to be revealed new Pope neither desired nor sought the office to which he was to be raised, but also because of the very nature of Christian governance was I confident of the Christological resonance.
Looking back on the nearly eight-year reign that followed, while accomplishment, glory, and joy come readily to the mind’s eye, it is not hard to see the suffering that the great office brought upon its occupant. This is how it is to serve by governing, by reigning, in love.
Not only ecclesial or pastoral governance reveals this dimension, but also secular or civil, and merely human, responsibility guarantees an element of grief when exercised in fidelity to love, embodied in Christ Jesus. The impossibility of making everything right and good for the ones who depend upon your leadership can bring frustration or resentment, but are better consigned to humility and compassion. A painful awareness of one’s own shortcomings, inabilities, and sinful failures can summon authentic sorrow. Any father or mother can recognize this element of the indispensable role they exercise in the lives entrusted to them.
This past week we celebrated the feast of Saint Henry, eleventh-century King of Bavaria and Holy Roman Emperor. The eleventh century was a horrible time in the history of Christendom as expectations of a world’s ending at the millennium gave way to a resignation to steady deterioration in all that guided, governed, or gave life. But Henry built and bettered as best he was able and set the stage for a flowering of civilization and faith and learning that would come in the centuries to follow. He saw the good fruit of his effort not while he labored, but rather only when he entered the glorious always instant of God.
Perhaps because the fight for throne and crown is on in earnest now do I think to reflect with you on the nature of Christian governance. The grasping for power is never out of season, not now, not ever nor anywhere. But to reign with Christ, who bestows a crown of governance to us each and all who are baptized into Him Who is Priest, and Prophet, and King, is to see the folly of such self-promotion. The higher the office, the heavier the crown and the sharper the thorns. Pray for all who bear authentic and faithful responsibility for lives and souls; pray for all who have the burden of Christian governance. At least, but not only, on Tuesdays.
Monsignor Smith
