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.