God and Politics

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    We’re in that time in our country where all the ads on television, radio, Facebook, etc., seem to be about politics.  Generally, those who love politics get really excited about this time of year, studying polls and updates on the races.  I think everyone else tends to put-up with all the commercials and mailings.  Our country seems particularly polarized, and for a while now we have failed to teach people how to dialogue respectfully and logically about candidates and policies, so we tend to just shout our positions at each other without truly engaging the people seeking office and the policies they support.  Rather than a healthy discussion over a meal or a drink, we tend to act more like monkeys at the zoo, throwing dung at each other.
    So in the midst of the political activity, today the Church, which doesn’t assign the readings based on the democratic system in the United States, puts before us a first reading and a Gospel that remind us about government.  In the first reading, we hear about Cyrus, God’s anointed, whom God chose for the sake of His People.  What’s interesting is that Cyrus was the Persian king, a pagan.  And yet, the word for anointed is mashiach, or messiah.  Cyrus is not the messiah; that is Christ.  And yet, Cyrus is God’s anointed who, though he doesn’t know God, will help return the Chosen People to the Holy Land so that they can witness that there is one God.
    And in the Gospel, the Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a puzzle concerning another pagan foreign leader, Caesar, and whether they need to pay taxes to the pagan Roman government.  The Pharisees likely thought that if Jesus said to pay taxes, the people would reject Him (after all, who wants to be encouraged to pay taxes to an occupying force that teaches a false religion).  But, if Jesus said not to pay taxes, they could report Him to the Romans and they would take care of Him.  Easy peasy.  But instead, Jesus turns the question on its head, and avoids both the scylla and the charybdis that the Pharisees put before Him.
    All of this should remind us that the question of who has governmental power and authority does not concern God all that much, because as Jesus said to Pilate on Good Friday, Pilate would have no power unless God had allowed Pilate to use it.  God can use a pagan government like the Persians to accomplish good for His People.  He can use a pagan government like the Romans and the pax Romana that came from their military domination of Europe and the Near East to create the perfect time for Jesus, the true Messiah, to be born and grow up in the Holy Land.  
    Everything, in the end, finds itself subject to God and what He directs or allows through His will.  “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” St. Paul reminds us, and God can use the sinfulness of rulers and governments even to accomplish holiness in His People.  The invitation to give God what belongs to Him really reminds us that, while we have civic responsibilities that we should exercise responsibly, our first duty is to God, who has given us everything and against whom no power on earth can ever compete.
    For that reason, I no longer tend to get worked up about politics.  I can’t honestly say I was always that way, and when I was younger I loved politics and reading the polls and trying to understand positions and policies and how to argue for the best ones.  But after the delayed election results in 2020, I found that I obsessed about politics and it stole my peace.  When I stopped trying to think that who the president or the governor was would greatly change my life, I found that I was happier.
    To be clear, I do not mean to communicate that elections don’t matter.  Elections do matter, and we ought to form our conscience well and vote accordingly.  We ought to do our best to support candidates and policies that protect and promote human dignity and the common good.  A great many people in the world, including 1.4 billion people in China, probably wish they could vote for their government officials freely.  We ought not to take our political process for granted.  
    But, no matter who gets elected, and no matter how good or how evil the policies they enact are, God is King, and no one can challenge His power or unseat Him from His Throne.  Yes, it’s nice when the City of Man resembles the City of God, but even when governments oppress us, our key is to be faithful to God and give God His due, no matter what Caesar says.  The Church certainly rejoiced when Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity, but She didn’t shrink for the three hundred years earlier that Roman emperors sought to stop the spread of the Gospel.  
    Yes, do vote this November with a conscience informed by the Catholic faith.  Do not worry if your candidate got elected or didn’t, or if the candidates or the policies they support are contrary to the Catholic faith, like abortion, euthanasia, gender dysphoria, same sex marriage, or socialism.  “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and God will sort out everything else in the end when His victory comes to fruition.

Three Words or Phrases

 Second Sunday of Easter
    Here’s an interesting experiment: thinking only to yourself (not out-loud), what three words would others use to describe you?  Again, this is a rhetorical question, but what words did you think others would use?  Are they different from the words that you would use to describe yourself?  Were there mostly positive or mostly negative?  
    This weekend, as we close out the Octave of Easter, there are three words that should describe every Catholic.  It may not (probably should not) be an exhaustive list, but these three words or phrases should describe every Catholic.  And these three words come from our celebration today.  Those three words or phrases are (in no particular order): a believer; concerned for others; merciful.
    The first reading, second reading, and Gospel all talk about believing.  To be a Catholic is to be a believer.  Bishop Mengeling loves to use this word.  But what do we believe?  At the heart, we believe that Jesus is who He says He is–the Son of God–and we trust in His words about how we are to live our lives.  Our belief is sometimes based upon observable realities, like St. Thomas seeing the risen Christ.  Sometimes our belief is not based on things that we can see.  But we are believers in the promises of God and the teachings of God, both as recorded in the Scriptures and as recorded in the teachings of the Magisterium, the teaching office of the Church entrusted to the Pope and the Bishops united with him on matters of faith and morals.
    Jesus claims everything in our life.  He claims our love, our obedience, our fidelity.  The only one who can do that is God.  So our belief that Jesus is God affects how we live.  If we feel that we can ignore Jesus when we disagree with Him, we’re not believers.  Fully believing in Jesus is a challenge to which maybe we don’t always live up, but it’s our goal.  It’s one thing to fail at a goal; it’s another altogether to have a different goal.  Our goal as Catholics should be to believe in Jesus, not just as a mental exercise, or a pious thought, but in ways that truly change the way we live.
    As an example of putting belief into action, our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes the first Catholics as being of one heart and one mind, not claiming any possessions as one’s own, and, in fact, selling property and putting the proceeds at the disposal of the Church for those in need.  This is where some might say, “See?!?  The first Catholics were socialists!  They owned everything in common!”  Wrong.  The first Christians weren’t socialists.  But they were concerned for others.  Rather than thinking about themselves, and because they believed in God, they thought about the needy as much or more than themselves.  And some on their own volition would decide to share what they have with the poor and live a life radically detached from ownership, relying on the each other to support themselves.  There is no evidence that the government or the Church instructed them to sell their house.  And some didn’t sell their homes, as this was where the first Christians would meet for early examples of Christian-style synagogue services, and perhaps even the Mass.  No one was compelled, but people freely gave.
    This is the witness that many of those in consecrated life still give.  They give up personal ownership of property and their own bank account to live as a brother or sister, monk or nun.  They rely on the community to care for their needs, so that they are more devoted to serving Jesus.  
    But before you sell your house to live with me in the rectory and let me take care of you with the money you donate, let me consider other ways to live as a man or woman concerned about others.  We all have a responsibility to care for ourselves and our families.  The Church teaches that the government should only get involved in providing for people’s needs where family and friends and local charities are unable.  But, while providing for our needs, we should also look to support those, to be the family and friends and local charity for those who, through no fault of their own, cannot provide for themselves.  People today are good at providing for programs.  But we are called, to the extent that we’re able, to help people out personally.  This is what Pope Francis means when he talks about serving the poor by being with them and looking into their eyes, and not simply letting an NGO (non-governmental organization) worry about the poor and needy.
  

  Lastly, the first Catholics were merciful.  Today, the Second Sunday of Easter, is also called Divine Mercy Sunday.  Pope St. John Paul II instituted this feast in order to help us all know of God’s mercy towards us.  Pope Francis declared a Year of Mercy in 2015.  The revelation to St. Thomas the Apostle of Jesus’ wounded hands, feet, and side, were really a revelation of His mercy, that He forgave us and did away with our sins when He shed His Blood on the cross.  Mercy does not pretend that a past offense did not occur.  Jesus did not pretend the wounds of His crucifixion were not there.  But rather than letting those wounds become an opportunity for vengeance on all those who led Him there, and all those who abandoned Him during His most needful hour, Jesus simply greets the apostles and disciples with the Hebrew word, “Shalom,” “Peace,” which means more than just non-conflict, but a wholeness and fullness of life.  
    Jesus earlier had told the parable of the unforgiving steward, and told us that we are to forgive as we are forgiven.  He also told us that the measure of forgiveness that we give to others is the measure that will be given to us.  Our reception of God’s mercy is the catalyst that allows us to be merciful to others, and that should most definitely be a hallmark of our life.  
    Certainly there are other aspects to being Catholic.  There are other qualities that should be present in our life.  But this week, let’s work on being a believer; concerned about others; and merciful!

Remember the Poor

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    When it comes to preaching homilies, in seminary we were jokingly (but also a little seriously) told two keys: the 5 Bs and KISS.  The 5 Bs are: Be brief, boy, be brief; KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid (Stupid being directed at the preacher).  I don’t know how brief I’ll be, but I can keep it pretty simple today.
    The readings today focus us on serving “outsiders.”  By outsiders I mean those about whom we heard in the first reading–the hungry, oppressed, homeless–but also anyone who is poor or marginalized.  As followers of Jesus, it is not enough to simply believe the right things (though that is important).  How we live, and how we treat others is also key.  We might say that those are the two parts of the greatest law (Love of God as right belief and right worship, and Love of Neighbor as right actions and morality). 
    This call by Jesus to change the way we treat others is part of what Jesus meant in the Gospel, that we are to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.”  By following Jesus, and living according to His way of life, we are to preserve what is good in society, and enlighten the parts of the world that are darkened by sin.  By being salt and light, we glorify our heavenly Father.
    St. John Chrysostom, one of the saints depicted in our icons, put it this way:

If you cannot remember everything, instead of everything, I beg you, remember this without fail, that not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth but theirs.  If we have this attitude, we will certainly offer our money; and by nourishing Christ in poverty here and laying up great profit hereafter, we will be able to attain the good things which are to come, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ…

Chrysostom means golden-mouthed, and though it might not seem so golden, he is certainly right.  As followers of Jesus, as Catholics, we have an obligation to the poor and marginalized, to help them as much as we can.  “Not,” as St. Paul says, “that others should have relief while you are burdened, but that as a matter of equality your surplus at the present time should supply their needs.” 
    Some would suggest that we don’t need to help the poor, because that’s what our taxes supply.  And certainly, there are some ways that the government can help in ways that individuals cannot.  It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to provide public housing based on personal generosity.  It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to take care of basic health needs for people who have no real means of income, without some sort of larger program.  But it is also true that a perennial teaching of Catholic social morality is that individuals or smaller entities that can provide for a need should be allowed to, and only when individuals or the smaller entities cannot should a larger entity or government step in (we call this subsidiarity).
    I should also be clear that St. John Chrysostom is not advocating a wholesale redistribution of wealth.  We hear that a lot from politicians who openly proclaim themselves as socialists.  It is as if a political party can decide to become Robin Hood, and steal from the rich to give to the poor.  But the Church does not advocate socialism, or for people to deputize themselves to decide how much people need, and take the rest from them by force.  Private property and wealth are acceptable, as long as one realizes that the “outsiders” have a right to our assistance for anything beyond what we need for basic living.  Jesus reminds us of this fact in Matthew 25, when he says that we will be judged on how we treated the hungry, thirsty, naked, ill, and those in prison. 
    What that looks like for each person is different.  I can’t give you a dollar amount, or even a percentage, for how much you should be giving to those in need.  The number 10% is tossed around, as the idea of a Biblical tithe, and to the extent that you're able, I would encourage sharing 10% between your parish, maybe Catholic Charities and a few other charities, and having some available as you encounter the poor in your day to day life.  Catholic usually give less than 1% to their parish.  Maybe it’s time for you to consider giving 2% to St. Pius X.  Maybe you can give more.  Maybe you can’t give 2%.  Whatever it is, you’ll know what you can and can’t give, whether to your parish, to charities, and to individuals.
    But remember that, as followers of Jesus, we have a responsibility to the “outsiders.”  As we encounter the daily poor, we can decide best whether they are truly in need, or whether, sadly, they are trying to scam us.  We can decide what charities use the money best for the poor, and areas of our city, State, country, and world that we feel particularly drawn to support.  But the key is that we are committed to helping others to the extent that we are honestly able.  I’ll end here with one more quote from St. John Chrysostom:

Do you want to honor Christ’s body?  Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked.  For He who said: “This is my body,” and made it so by his words, also said: “You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me.”