A venerable guide for gracious living in all walks of life is the reminder that the graveyards of the world are filled with irreplaceable people.

Its bluntness calls us back to humility from a human, all too human, tendency. The good and the great, and the rest of us dull normals too, tend to fall into the temptation of believing no one else could possibly accomplish a given task as well as we can because, well, we’re the ones history has appointed to complete it.

In no other field of endeavour, however, does recognition of that belief’s logical and logistical absurdity come with more cold humiliation than in the world of democratic politics. Dictators die in their beds or at the hands of former sy- cophants. The elected get a rude knock on the door and the non-negotiable message: “The people have spoken. You’re dead to them.”

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In North America at the moment, we’re in the squirm-inducing prelude to that rat-a-tat-tat finality as both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden wrestle with their delusions of durability and refuse to accept the reality that their time at the top has run out.

In the face of universal cringing that followed his tragic performance in the recent debate with Donald Trump, Biden emitted a bellow of wounded pride for the ages by insisting “I will not be pushed out” as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. Foolhardy bravery is one thing. His words, in fact, serve to under- score the debility of mind that his mumbling, stumbling, sputtering, failures of memory revealed for all to see on TV.

The president of the United States of America is so neurologically compro- mised, as the new euphemism has it (in rougher times we called it being babba- gagga), that he has forgotten there is no need to push someone when the ground is opening around them. Post-debate polls unearthed the statistic that 80 per cent of Americans believe Biden is too old to serve a second presidential term. Perhaps more damning is that 76 per cent of his own party share that view. This is the support he’ll take to next month’s Democratic convention in Chicago? If so, pride will inevitably go before a return to earth.

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North of the border, Prime Minister Trudeau would be well advised to refrain from indulging the Canadian reflex of looking south with frosty disdain and counting on the kinder, gentler Canadian voter to preserve him. True, unlike America’s president, Canada’s PM clearly still has all his marbles. But the Liberal Party squandered massive staying power with the results of the Toronto-St. Paul’s riding byelection last month.

As virtually all have agreed, loss of the seat in the heartland of Canada’s major city was also confirmation of the year-long trend of ever-more abysmal polling results for the prime minister personally vis-à-vis Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. Yet the PM continues to shrug off the knocks against him by insisting he will lead his party into the 2025 federal election.

Far be it from The Catholic Register to risk a partisan tinge by giving the PM political career advice. Nor would we behave like a nosy neighbour and poke our noses into the business across the border. Yet given that both the leaders are devout, if interpretively fluid, Catholics, we can appropriately recommend their opening to grace by examining a Spirit-led example from within Holy Mother Church.

Such would be Pope Benedict XVI, who shocked the world by resigning as pope on Feb. 11, 2013, the first pontiff to voluntarily step down since Celestine V in 1294. Benedict humbly retired when he recognized that he no longer had the energy, the endurance, the capacities needed at that particular moment to lead Christ’s Church on Earth.

Then 85, only four years older than Joe Biden is now, he necessarily recognized something more fundamental: that he could and would be replaced, as indeed he was. Most profoundly, he perceived that ending his time in office did not mean ending his service to the Church, to the world, to God.

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“I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth. But I would still with my heart, my love, my prayers, my reflection and all my inner strength, like to work for the common good and the good of the Church and of humanity,” he said in the central loggia of the apostolic palace of Castel Gandolfo mere hours before departing.

Words to remember. Words to live by.