A young woman leaning over the blood-stained body of her spouse is the picture of the world’s greatest tragedy. It recalls that moment when the crimsoned body of Christ was taken from a Cross and laid in Mary’s lap.
In all the heart-breaking dramas of the world, a woman is summoned to have her heart pierced mystically, as a man’s heart is riven with steel. A Jacqueline leaning over a John is a compassionate beating of a heart in rhythm with a Mary leaning over a crucified Jesus. Grant the infinite distance between a God-man dying for the sins of the world, and a man dying because of a man’s inhumanity to man; grant that unbridgeable span between voluntarily laying down one’s life and having it violently taken away – the latter still derives its value from the former, as the coin from the die.
I was in Rome in the first shattering shock of the death of President Kennedy. The suddenness of his death came like an earthquake; it affected so many and in such magnitude that one could not find a heart to console – others, too, were inconsolable. In lesser bereavements, there are those who are not involved, but then there were no others to wipe away tears, for they too were mourners.
Nothing is as democratic as death, for all of a sudden, there is no distinction between Jew or Greek, male or female, socialist or totalitarian, Republican or Democrat. All suddenly realize the wickedness of the world in which we live. Not until we see what is done to the humanity-loving do we grasp the frenzied hate which will not be stilled by the tears of a little John or the whimpering sadness of a Caroline.
Everyone says: “The world has lost a great leader.” True! But in the future, we may speak of “our Second Emancipator.”
It takes a sacrificial death to break down the walls of division. When some men refuse to acknowledge others as their equals under God, words will not unite them. It takes blood. It took a Lincoln’s blood to unite a nation; it has taken a Kennedy’s blood to prepare for the equality of men in that same nation. This is the mystery of his death – the price men destined for greatness have to pay to prove that love is stronger than hate.
Dorothy Sayre, thinking about God taking upon Himself the hunger, thirst, anxiety, fear and sins of men, wrote: “The Christian Faith is God taking His own medicine.” To saints, missionaries, nurses and to others is sometimes given the vocation to let the suffering of their fellowman pass through the channel of their common heart – and it breaks.
Only twice, perhaps, in the history of our nation has the desire to unite men in peace made Presidents take on themselves the burden of human inequality to a point of saving others at the cost of self. On a brighter Easter day, we shall see that our national brotherhood was purchased by the blood of a victim – John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In the future, too, at the other end of a pool where the image of the victim of Lincoln is reflected, there will be cast another monument, the heroic image of the victim Kennedy, for both were great, not by what was done by them, but what was done through them.
He has crossed the “New Frontier,” that mysterious dividing line where a man goes to render an account of his stewardship. He need not fear, for “Blessed are they who suffer for justice sake.” Lincoln’s death gave us peace for decades afterwards. May God grant through the same Calvary-Law of sacrifice in President Kennedy, that peace “which the world cannot give.”
Above all our national figures, these two Presidents of Sorrow stand forever near the Man of Sorrows saying: “I will stand here at Thy side; Despise my nation not.”
Interplanetary Dust 