Dominica XXXII per Annum C
6 November 2022
The books of the Maccabees tell the story of the Jewish Maccabeean revolt, in which the Jews were contending with the rule of a Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes IV. He was seeking to force his non-Greek subjects to adopt Greek, pagan ways. This ran afoul of maintaining a pure and authentic Jewish faith. Today’s passage tells the story of those faithful Jews who refused the king’s governmental order to eat pork in violation of their religious law from God. The story of these Jewish martyrs is inspiring because they endured torture and death rather than violate aspects of their faith and its practice. These Jewish martyrs knew themselves to be God’s People first, something of greater importance than their earthly citizenship. This reading stands out today because the tension between a secular ruler and the demands of secular government as opposed to the authentic living of one’s faith strikes me as an important lesson as we seek to do our duty in Tuesday’s elections as both citizens of God’s kingdom and citizens of the kingdom of man but, it must be said, citizens of God’s kingdom first.
The Maccabees show us the proper outlook or vision that a person of faith ought to have when navigating the often-meandering paths of this secular world. Are we made for this present world only? Do we think that is the case? Do we act as if that is the case? Or do we have a vision that acknowledges that we are pilgrims here and that our journey will take us to the passage through death to the next realm, a passage whose destination will be determined by the fact that we will be judged by God? If you believe that your destiny is heaven, you will act in a way that reveals you have priorities that are different from the priorities of those who consider this world only. God’s law, God’s kingdom, is higher and takes priority over man’s law. To acknowledge this is, for the person of faith, critical for having our priorities rightly ordered. Believers don’t seek conflict with man’s law. But when man’s law would require of a believer that he transgress God’s law on some grave matter, then the believer must resist and object to the evil that man’s law seeks to require.
I suspect that many in our political class, especially among our national figures, even those who publicly claim to be people of faith, have a vision limited to this realm. Many have no real eternal vision. They have no real reverential awe, or fear, of God. I suspect that is a key matter at the heart of the secular slide we see in our world, a slide that feels of late more like a Niagara Falls of cascading over the edge from sanity to insanity. The secular-minded think man’s ways and what man can do are supreme. They do not think of an eternal judgment or consequences for having chosen to act contrary to God’s law. We cannot make that same mistake and adopt that philosophy of life. We need to know that our belonging to God requires of us Catholics that we seek to promote His primacy and His order in our world. We are to seek to order this world in accord with godly ways by our action, by our energies, and by our promotion of the truth and of sound moral reasoning that understands the claims of justice and seeks to establish an authentic common good where the fundamental rights of others are secured. This should not be controversial for believers. Think of the many things we hold in faith that should make it obvious to us that faith and the social order, that faith and our politics, go together. Obvious things like these: God has made the world in goodness and with specific order and purpose. God has taken on our flesh and shows us from the “inside”, as it were, how to live in the flesh in a way that is in accord with God and our own innate dignity. Can we fail to notice in our frequent praying of the Lord’s Prayer those lines with implications for the social, political order: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt. 6:9ff). We hold in faith that Christ is our King. Do we realize the clear meaning of professing that he is sovereign and we are subjects? Or do we live as if we are our own sovereigns? Or as if we have no king but Caesar? Finally, the example of so many saints who brought their faith to bear on addressing social needs and improving the social order, by caring for the poor, founding hospitals and orphanages, and by building an education system, all of this is a powerful sign of how we must preserve that proper vision by which we remain faithful to God and by which we refuse to act contrary to godly ways, even if pressured by government leaders and secular elites.
Our choices these days are about stark differences between good and evil of the most-grave kind. It really is not difficult to find national party platform positions and the stance of individual candidates on these issues. We need to take note of those issues in our moral reasoning that are called intrinsically evil, because that means they can never be good and never acceptable under any condition. The legal fiction of a constitutional right to abortion has thankfully been rectified by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. However, the abortion fight is far from over. We have the tough work on a state-by-state basis now to convert hearts away from despair and the lie of abortion. No longer being able to hide behind a federal statement like Roe v. Wade, local candidates now have to be much more upfront about their stance on abortion. When we have a clear choice between a candidate or platform that would support or expand abortion versus one that would seek to limit it and eliminate it, we can never morally support abortion or such a candidate who would expand that evil. The euphemisms of “reproductive health care” and “reproductive justice” are just masks for one of the gravest of evils. We have choices to make in the realm of marriage and family. Our culture suffers under the lie that two men or two women can form a bond that is somehow no different than, or is somehow morally equivalent to, the good that traditional marriage is for society and for the raising and formation of children. The struggles of the same-sex attracted should be met with compassion from believers and should not be met with a cold shoulder. We need to speak biblical moral truth to them in charity. However, we do them no good by voting for, supporting, or promoting the LGBTQ agenda. The modern distortion of marriage and family is another grave evil, whether it is same-sex marriage or any other arrangement that departs from the bond of one man to one woman. We cannot support or promote these distortions in our electoral choices. Another grave evil of our time is the transgender movement and the lie that our bodies do not speak or show us reliable truth. Despite the fact that the methodology of science is about observable phenomena and the fact that even a grade school level science book would cover the basics of biology and sex, the elite in our leadership and cultural classes insist that we bow to the construct of gender and the lie that cosmetic surgery could make one the opposite sex in any real way. The indoctrination into this ideology is forced upon children now too. If we hold proper catholic moral values we must reject this lie. We cannot support it in our political choices.
But more than simply refusing to support these and other grave evils when we vote, I think we also need to understand the exciting and yes, at times perilous, call to evangelize and change our society for the better. Our catholic moral values are not just about saying “no” to things, saying “no” to evils; the truth of our faith is also about saying “yes” to what is true and good and beautiful. It is about saying “yes” to the things that will truly help people flourish. And thus, we should have faith and confidence that our act of voting is an important duty for our citizenship in the realms of both God and man. And more than just making moral choices on the ballot, I am more and more convinced of something else that our time needs: We need solid catholics – people here in these pews, in our parish, to wake up to what is going on around us and to run for office in order to drive positive change. I’m not even talking about huge statewide or national races that seem out of our grasp. I’m talking about local races. The mask is off in our culture these days and we now see that these complicated evils are not just elsewhere, but they are right in our neighborhoods and even our backyards, and in our school systems. We need solid catholics to run for local school boards, city council, and mayor races. Those races are decided by very few votes. Don’t tell me that good people here in this congregation couldn’t step up to bring godly values and sanity to our community. And if we and just a few other churches stood together as a sort of voting bloc we could determine moral outcomes for the better in our community.
Too many modern Christians and leaders aren’t passionate about confronting moral evil. It’s not enough just to call it out. We need to confront it with prayer, and penance, and sacrifice, and civic engagement, and, yes, even putting ourselves into the race for office. Don’t throw up your hands in defeat and say, “Oh well. That’s just how things are.” Modern life feels to me like a crazy circus in which I did not choose to participate. As I look over our political landscape, I am rather tired of hearing the now constant claim that the participation in the political process of people with traditional religious and/or conservative values is tantamount to a “threat to our democracy.” That is really what is being claimed. We don’t want to let that beat us down and cause us to fail to participate. Because when we participate in the process, and all the more when we are informed, that IS democracy. Groups of atheists and leftist secularists are pouring dark money into Oklahoma campaigns. It’s happening right now in the current election cycle. Oklahoma has a target on its back because we are known to be a God-fearing State. We need to be aware of the dangerous ideologies of our time, engaged in civic matters with a divine faith, and fueled by a courage much like that of the Maccabean brothers. God and His laws have primacy in our lives and they must have primacy in the choices we make about those who govern us. Thy will be done, Father, on earth as it is in heaven!
