“First of all,” Saint Paul writes to Saint Timothy, “I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.”
When is the last time you prayed for President Trump? Or Speaker Pelosi? Or Governor Baker? Or Mayor Perry? Or any of our government leaders?
Not second-guess them, moan or giggle about them, criticize or defend them, surf the web for sleezy stories about them, but pray for them. As, Saint Paul admonishes us : pray for them!
Archbishop John Carroll, the first Bishop of these United States, understood the Apostle’s admonition. But then again, he had to. He was named our first Bishop by Pope Pius VI in 1789, the year after the Constitution went into effect.
The Archbishop was no stranger to this fledgling government, having been sent in 1776, (along with his cousin Charles, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) and a certain Benjamin Franklin to go to Montreal to persuade the French colony to enter the war on behalf of the Continental Congress. While his immediate mission failed, it did help later on in establishing a bond with Catholic France which bore fruit at Yorktown, where the largely Catholic-financed French fleet cut off supplies to British General Cornwallis, enabling General Washington to bring an end to the war.
Later that same year, Archbishop Carrol wrote a prayer and sent it to all the Catholics in the 13 colonies, interceding for the Pope, the Bishop (that is, himself), the President, the Congress and the Governors of each of the states. Pray for them, Saint Paul admonished. And Bishop Carrol was obedient to that command.
His prayer for President Washington is short and to the point. It begins by addressing God, the creator of all that is good:
We pray Thee O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgments decreed…
He then goes on to ask God to assist “the President of these United States” with his Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude “that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides.” Eminently useful in three ways:
First, “by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion;”
Second, “by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy;”
and third, “by restraining vice and immorality.”
Let’s take a look at each of those prayers for our government.
First, “by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion;”
We need look no further than President Washington’s Farewell Address to hear of the importance of religion in American pubic life, where [he wrote] “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…[ed. note: an indispensable support, mind you] for whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
Or his successor, the profoundly rational Mr. Adams of Massachusetts, who wrote to Thomas Jefferson near the end of his life: "I do not know how to prove physically, that we shall meet and know each other in a future state…My reasons for believing it, as I do most undoubtedly, are that I cannot conceive such a being could make such a species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth…thus all would appear, with all of its swelling pomp, a boyish firework."
So, first we pray that the President encourage respect for virtue and religion. Then we pray that he ‘faithfully execute our laws in justice and mercy.’
Notice, Bishop Carroll prays now just for justice, but for mercy: a complex Biblical injunction understood well by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who a short time before he died proclaimed “the rule of law is always second to the law of love.”
So, we pray for religion, justice, mercy, and finally, Bshop Carroll prays that the administration conduct its work in righteousness, “by restraining vice and immorality.”
How can the Presidency restrain vice and immorality in our government? First, by his example, which is why I learned in grammar school to imitate George Washington, caught in the midst of chopping down a cherry tree, but who nonetheless could not tell a lie. Mrs. Luzasak, my third grade teacher, also taught me to be like the young and Honest Abe Lincoln, who whenever he realized he had shortchanged a customer by a few pennies, would close the shop and deliver the correct change—even if the customer lived a day’s ride from the store!
But beyond the content of his character, the President also restrains vice and immorality by the bully pulpit from which he preaches goodness and morality with inspirational words. Words like:
Ask not, what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
or
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
Or President Reagan, who I can still see sitting in the oval office, consoling us as we mourned the death of the Challenger astronauts, reminding us that they had merely “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
Words like that change lives, recall our better angels and remind us who we are as Americans and faithful believers.
So let us heed the call of Saint Paul, that more important than the complaining or campaigning are the prayers we offer for our leaders in these United States: “That they might by encourage respect for virtue and religion; that they might see to the execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and that they might restrain vice and immorality.”
Then, as our first Bishop wrote in a letter to our First President some 229 years ago, we will say of them: “By [their] example and [their] vigilance…By their exalted maxims and unwearied attention to the moral and physical improvement of our country, [they will] produce the happiest effects.”
