Blessed Karl: A Patron for 2020
Emperor Karl and Empress Zita in Exile, ca. 1921
By Fr. Britton Hennessey
“You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.” This quote from Atticus Finch, a leading character in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, came to my mind while reflecting on the life of Blessed Karl and where we find ourselves in 2020.
I’m fairly young in terms of priest-years having just celebrated my third anniversary in May of 2020. Somehow in seminary, despite having six years of education, we did not cover how to live in a world during a pandemic, let alone how to live in a pandemic world fraught with a great amount of social and political disunity. At the onset of the COVID-19, I found myself with an empty church before a camera preparing to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. What a strange feeling! What seminary did teach me though was how to bring Jesus Christ to His people and bring them to Him… nowhere did we learn how to be distant from them. For many months, I could not be face to face with the members of my parish, nor could I offer them the Eucharist. Though I understood why, the conflict and fear in my heart were great and left me largely exhausted. I took comfort, though, when I reflected on Blessed Karl. Though one could opine on many aspects of his saintly life, I really felt close to him in one distinct area.
Blessed Karl loved the people of his kingdom… they were God’s people, but they were his people. As their leader, indeed he strove to rule them as his job required, but to him this was not just a job—this was his vocation. It was a God-given calling to provide for his people as a father does for his children. As we know from history, there was a great amount of political and social turmoil. Eventually, Karl was forced into exile. He, too, was separated from his people. He could not positively impact their lives as he once did. He could not speak to them face to face… but he never stopped loving them. And he never lost his faith.
As a priest, I’m called to share in the ministerial roles of Christ. For me, also, this is not a job—it’s a vocation. The anguish I felt at being apart from my people for a time will never be far from my mind. The deep longing to comfort them in their sorrows, congratulate them in their joys, and encounter their brokenness in person was deeply disrupted. Sure, ministries continued on as they could, but there was very much a void in my life. In a situation like this, one is always tempted to “bend the rules” a little bit, but the risk to the people was too great. Blessed Karl realized this upon his two attempts to retake his throne, but despite his great desire to serve his people in person, he couldn’t put them in danger.
In this time of the pandemic, you don’t have to be a priest to experience what I’ve elucidated, and you don’t have to be a monarch. All of us have been deprived of a normal routine, social interactions on demand, and a sense of peace. I cannot speak to what extent fear was a part of Blessed Karl’s life, but it’s not necessary because I know that his faith was strong. For us in this time, we must not let fear cripple us—we, like Blessed Karl, must have faith and we must dwell in love. We must remember that this earth is God’s Kingdom, and He will never abandon us.
Blessed Karl, pray for us.
Fr. Britton Hennessey is a priest of the Diocese of Covington and is Parochial Vicar of Saint Timothy Parish in Union, Kentucky. Fr. Hennessey serves as the Gebetsliga U.S.A. and Canada Content Developer for EmperorCharles.org.