Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 148

The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

 

Because voting involves a judgement upon incumbents and their challengers, the approaching elections on November 4 should remind every Christian that we stand under the judgment of God. In his inaugural Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assured us,

"For as you judge, so will you be judged."

Judgment, in this context, is more than an official act of a government authority. It is what we do and how we live our lives. We are always gathering information and making decisions that affect ourselves and those around us. We are continually creating ourselves. Voting is also a judgement; and as we vote so do we decide who and what we are. We are responsible for that.

Ten days before the elections, we hear Jesus's teaching of the Two Great Commandments. Clearly, these are the principles by which we should live, choose, act, and vote. On the Day of Last Judgment the records will indicate how intensely you loved the "Lord your God," and by what standard you loved your neighbors.

Remembering a long, painful history of sectarian violence the writers of the American Constitution put the highest priority on our Freedom of Religion. It is the first guaranteed freedom of the First Amendment. Many people, including Catholics, stupidly assume that guarantee will always be there. That ain't the way it works! We use it or lose it.

Voting Day calls us to "Do Justice," which begins with giving God what is God's due: worship, honor, glory, praise, thanksgiving, atonement, and reparation. Jesus states it plainly,

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.

Those who habitually neglect their First Amendment duty to practice their Catholic religion threaten their children and grandchildren with a severe loss of freedom. It will be restored only after bloodshed.

Our first reading today concerns the "aliens" among us, with a stern reminder:

...for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.  

We speak of them today as minorities; they include the First Americans who proceeded by several millennia the European migrants, and Black Americans who arrived on slave ships. They include our fellow North Americans from Mexico, and fellow Americans from South and Central America. They include Catholics who are still regarded with suspicion in a society that was Protestant but is now atheist. Aliens are the unborn, the elderly, persons with disability, and those who self-identify by their sexual desires. Aliens are those who are made to feel unwelcome.  

In many ways we have all become aliens in a culture of future shock. Few feel entirely at home or comfortable in this evolving world, and the members of the dominant culture often feel the least safe or welcome. Their agnosticism leaves them especially hopeless and vulnerable to the fear tactics of demagogues.

The gospel, in the context of Voting Day, commands us to welcome aliens as neighbors, and to decide accordingly. It challenges us to listen to our neighbors and be enlightened by their experience. If a spouse can surprise us with a different perspective on a hurt we thought was healed ages ago, how much more will a stranger show us a picture of ourselves we had never expected to see? Many self-described "white people" are learning only recently how much they owe to black people for privileges they took for granted.

By electing public officials and choosing proposed laws and ordinances we form and judge ourselves. We pray that God will guide our choices.