Mike Johanns: Saturday Service

Johanns still had the ironing to do. He spreads a sheet under the ironing board so the starch doesn't spot the floor. After that, he cuts the grass.

"My best time is when I'm out there, mowing the lawn," he said. His 14-hour workdays at USDA dissolve, blurring the worries of overseeing the farm bill or protecting the sugar industry. When he mows and the motor roars and the exhaust ripples the grass, Johanns could close one eye and be 8 years old again, driving the tractor through a hayfield.

"The discipline, the risk," he said, recalling the farming life. "So much of it is beyond your control. Too wet. Too dry." One season when he was young, it was so dry, the corn didn't even make an ear. The family gathered at the kitchen table. The crop had died, his mother told the four children. His father, a straight-backed man of 6-2, got very quiet.

Soon after, one night at bedtime, "I was horsing around. I jumped out of bed and ran into my parents' bedroom -- I was shocked."

His father, a soaring, unbent figure, was on his knees. He was praying the rosary.

And so on Saturday afternoons when Johanns's chores are done, he and Stephanie drive to St. Aloysius Church on Capitol Hill, and walk down the stairs to the basement chapel for services. On a recent Saturday, a dozen people sat scattered in the pews. It is a place of worship reduced to its simplest elements -- a white wall, a plain wood cross, two burning candles. Johanns turned off his emergency cell phone, the one for calls from the White House.

He crossed himself.

The priest sang, "Alleluia, alleluia, one does not live on bread alone . . ."

Johanns bowed his head. The back of his neck was tanned and lined.

". . . but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God . . ."

And for the second time that day, the Cabinet secretary was kneeling. In the morning for his chores; in the evening for his Lord.