Of Endings

“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending.”
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit)

This week, I’ve been thinking about endings – the end of empires, of eras, of fragile human lives.

The last Habsburg Crown Prince died this week. The official notice read in part:

Otto von Habsburg, eldest son of the last regnant Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, long-time member of the European Parliament and Honorary President of the International Paneuropean Union died at his residence in Pöcking, Upper Bavaria at the age of 98 on July 4th, 2011. …

Instead of Funeral wreath the family would appreciate donations to the Otto von Habsburg Foundation …

His body will be lying in repose in the church of St. Ulrich, Pöcking, Germany. Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament will be taking place.

(Source)

What a thin notice for such a great figure.

Others lauded him as Father of the multinational European Parliament and a champion of a united and democratic Europe.

Even a decade and a half after his father’s pseudo-abdication, he was still enough of a force that Hitler issued an arrest warrant for him and referred to the Nazi military operation against Austria as “Operation Otto”. He knew who the enemy was.

Otto von Habsburg was just as great a thorn in the side of the Communist authorities, and the Soviets forbade him from entering any of the Eastern Bloc countries.

He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1999 and a President of the International Pan-Europe Movement for more than 30 years.

If he couldn’t have his Empire, at least he could work for a United Europe.

During the 13 days of mourning, several Requiem Masses will be celebrated throughout the former Imperial realms. He will be entombed in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna on 16 July and his heart buried in Pannonhalma Archabbey in Hungary on 17 July.

No doubt, they will observe the traditional forms, or some version of them.

After the Requiem Mass at the Cathedral in Vienna, his body will be brought to the Capuchin church where the Imperial vault is located.

The doors will be closed.

The official leading the funeral procession will knock upon the door with a heavy mace, and the Prior’s voice from within will ask, “who seeks entry?”

The official will reply, “His Majesty Otto, by the grace of God Emperor of Austria; Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Illyria; King of Jerusalem; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany, Crakow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Bukovina; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Count of Habsburg and Tyrol.”

To this, the Prior replies, “We don’t know him. Who seeks entry?”

“Emperor Otto, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia.”

“We don’t know him. Who seeks entry?”

“Otto, a poor sinner who seeks God’s mercy.”

And the doors will open, and the body will be taken in for burial.

I don’t know that they’ll actually recite all of those titles (and there are even more, believe me). They may just say “Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary and Bohemia”, as those were his titles as Crown Prince. We shall see.

With HRIH Otto’s passing, the last link to the Old Empire passes away as well. His House ruled the Holy Roman Empire since the time of Rudolf I in 1273, and even when Napoleon forced the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, the Habsburgs retained the Imperial title and most of their ancient privileges.

But this is not the only ending this week, for today the last space shuttle mission will begin. Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to land on 20 July, the 42nd anniversary of our first landing on the Moon.

And then, for a while anyway, the frontier is closed. We can’t get back to the Moon. We’re not going to Mars – a planet colonizable right now using off-the-shelf equipment and 20th century technology, if only we had the political will.

In a couple of weeks, the United States will have no space vehicles and no capacity to build them. We’ll have to catch increasingly expensive rides with the Russians just to get to the International Space Station.

Our manned space program has been adrift for a long, long time, and now it is effectively dead.

I think this is a terrible shame, as humankind is at its best when it has frontiers. Without them, we tend to turn on each other.

So maybe this week marks the end of two Empires.

This is not a terrible thing; everything ends. We may mourn their passing, but everything in this world is ephemeral. Only Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (cf. Heb. 13:8).

Kingdoms and empires have passed away; peoples once renowned for their history and civilization have disappeared; time and again the nations, as though overwhelmed by the weight of years, have fallen asunder; while the Church, indefectible in her essence, united by ties indissoluble with her heavenly Spouse, is here today radiant with eternal youth, strong with the same primitive vigor with which she came from the Heart of Christ dead upon the Cross.

Men powerful in the world have risen up against her. They have disappeared, and she remains.

Philosophical systems without number, of every form and every kind, rose up against her, arrogantly vaunting themselves her masters, as though they had at last destroyed the doctrine of the Church, refuted the dogmas of her faith, proved the absurdity of her teachings. But those systems, one after another, have passed into books of history, forgotten, bankrupt; while from the Rock of Peter the light of truth shines forth as brilliantly as on the day when Jesus first kindled it on His appearance in the world, and fed it with His Divine words: “Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass” (Matt. 24:35).

(Source: Pope Pius X, Encyclical Iucunda Sane, 1904)

So raise a glass, won’t you, to the passing of Empires and their Emperors:

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings… for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps Death his court”.