Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
What is God’s?
“Our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.” For me, these words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians offer such great wisdom for living through the current election process in our country. What words of the gospels inform our hearts, minds, and actions? What power—what anointing’s, what gifts of the Holy Spirit are we experiencing? And where does our passion, our conviction come from? How do we use our power—our voices, our actions, our voting?
Over the past few months, many of us have been intentionally hosting listening conversations. We have encouraged open, respectful dialogue among persons we love, and sometimes among persons who think very differently. Our respect for each other comes from our firm belief that we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We are acknowledging the pressures, the grief, and the stressors of life in pandemic times. Some of these are exacerbated by partisan politics. Others are discovering
The Pharisees tried to entrap Jesus. What is “Ceasar’s”? What is God’s? What is the challenge of sorting out this reality? How do we do it? For me, this Gospel is very real in the midst of our elections.
Pope Francis, The USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), Archbishop Gustavo, and our pastors offer us guidance in applying the gospels, listening to the Holy Spirit, and exercising our civic responsibility in voting. They instruct us on how to form our conscience—our own conscience. No one can tell us who to vote for. No one can tell us that it is a sin to vote for a particular person because of their religion, or because of our own religious beliefs. (God used Cyrus, a pagan king, even anointed him, even though he didn’t know God, to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.)
Ultimately, it is up to each one of us to vote with an informed conscience. Decisions about who to vote for are difficult given the complexity of all the issues. To help you with informing yourselves, you will find excellent, reliable, multi-issue oriented resources here: http://sfasat.org/resources-2/faithful-citizenship/.
Share these resources with others.
The reality is that there are many voices, authors, websites, groups that are trying to influence us to vote for certain candidates. Many of them use the adjective Catholic. Some of them are even priests and bishops. In most cases, they do not represent the totality of Catholic social teaching when they present a single issue, one that they claim is the most important one. The Catholic perspective and influence include many issues. I dare to say that Jesus was about healing divisions, naming injustices, making people think before they act (casting stones?). As followers of Jesus, we have much to think about! For wisdom, guidance, and courage, we pray!
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious has prepared reflections for each week from now until Election Day. They are very helpful to me, and I hope you will be encouraged and inspired.
