A View from the Shoulders

As soon as my kids were old enough to sit, I’d put my hands around their waists and put them onto my shoulders.  I’d put their legs around my neck and circle my forefingers and thumbs around their soft little wrists cupping my hands around theirs, holding on firmly but gently, so they could sit up there safely.  Sometimes I’d exaggerate

my steps so they would bounce around a bit up there, and I’d feel their little chins gently nudging the back of my head.   Truth was, it was the easiest way to carry them, and it gave them a commanding view of wherever we were going. 

It was just such a memory that came to the newly Pope John XXIII when he was lifted up on this papal throne in procession for the first time.  He recalled his papa lifting him up onto his shoulders so that he could have a better view of a passing procession.  Jesuit writer James Martin uses this moment in John XXIII’s life to describe his intimate humanity, and it really struck me.  Here is Angelo Roncalli just elected as pope, as vicar of Christ, dressed in his newly-fashioned regalia, being carried in a chair on the shoulders of four strong, stern-faced Swiss Guards, blessing the faithful who smile and cry and reach out to him and what is he thinking about?  Sitting on his father’s shoulders!  The moment of his crowning achievement was warmed and humanized by this memory of being lifted to get a better view.  In his book My Life with the Saints, Fr. Martin goes on in his chapter on the pope to show how he kept that sense of his papacy as being raised up in order to see the faces of the people he served.  Being raised up was not a matter of honor, but a call to serve those he saw.

George Herbert, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Isaac Newton all coined the phrase that came to my mind in reading this story of John XXIII’s memory of his being lifted up by his father.  It is written that "Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."

Bernard’s quote started a procession in my own mind of those who have lifted me, who have given me a better view by doing so, a better view than they themselves had.  Three questions have since come to my mind, and I offer them to you now:

1.       Who has lifted us up during our lifetimes; who has given us a richer view?

2.       What were the views to which they lifted us, as the passing procession was for Roncalli’s father?

3.       Who do we lift up now, regardless of the strength of our shoulders, and what is it we hope they see?

Angelo Roncalli threw open the window of the Catholic Church to allow the fresh wind of the Spirit to lift the gazes of millions of worshippers.  He wanted not subjects who bowed to him, but fellow Christians who looked with him at the example of Jesus, an example not of ancient power and status, but of daily love and service.  He wanted to lift the whole church on his shoulders, so they could see, just as his papa had lifted him.