Aliens in America: Day 25

Grieving in Hope 

‘As aliens, live in reverent fear’ (1 Pet 1:17). 

‘Nothing is more hopeful than to look at the world as it really is.’ 

Pope Leo XIII 

Grief shrouds this election and its aftermath. No celebration here. Both candidates gave all, and I pray for Trump to be a gracious winner and Harris to lose with dignity. I pray for both candidates to be renewed.  

And I listen to Peter as he addresses aliens who ‘experience grief due to a host of trials’ (1 Pet 1:6): my state of Missouri casting off her abortion ban and the polarizing of our republic, especially Christians stoning each other across the divide.  

Though this leg of the election is over, its tensions aren’t. Both candidates highlighted our polarities: male versus female, rich against poor, secular youth fighting the old and pious, nostalgic conservatives circling wagons against usual suspects.  Frustration and ignorance. Land of the free? This melting pot has curdled. We need serious help.  

I take heart that we are Christians and trust in the King who made and redeems all things, including this messy late-term democracy. The government rests on His shoulders, and He gives me a share in it. St. John Paul II said that ‘there can be no genuine solution to the “social question” apart from the Gospel’ (‘On the 100th Anniversary of Rerum Novarum,’ 1991, 5). The late great pope lived that courageously and imperfectly. I believe the Gospel. I hold fast to our solution.  

We reclaim Gospel wholeness for our country through the Gospel. Like me, both parties violated conscience and split what I champion in half. Our divided nation truncates the Gospel, draws and quarters it, obscuring the just and merciful face of Jesus.  

Only Jesus can make His message whole for us. I take heart at Peter’s words to an alien people: ‘Rejoice! He is refining you! Like gold immersed in fire, He is making you true’ (1 Pet. 1:7, paraphrase mine). And He is using this tumultuous season of public life to do it.  

Yes, I say ‘public’ life. I concur with Pope Leo XIII that Jesus frees us for ‘life out there,’ the political community that we can and must own as ours, alongside all other citizens.  

Being a Christian of conscience necessitates our ‘yes’ to common sense morality for the common good. Leo made a case for three communities we each exist within that overlap and complement each other, beginning with our domestic ‘church’—marriage and family, informed and protected by Church, the second community, both of which ‘live and move’ in our culture, the third community, the ‘body politic.’  

We may currently mistrust the latter, but we live there and can exert positive influence with strength, grace, and fortitude.  This election woke me up to doing my part in faith, trusting Jesus to empower and purify me to do so. May we give ourselves generously. Jesus, lead on.  

In particular, I want to shore up what Russell Hittinger describes as the ‘most vulnerable of the three communities’: marriage and family. Family ‘is the most important to get right. Whoever shrinks from that community is not well-prepared to live in the other two.’  

We must get marriage right. We must strengthen parents to commit and give form to children, ‘to make them aware of their dignity and ready to reach for their unique destinies’ (JPII ‘On the Anniversary…’ 39).    

We can’t let the stink of politics burn or choke us out. We must find Jesus in the flames: deeper, higher, and truer than the mess we are in. May we unite our little afflictions to the suffering of Jesus; in His divine energy, risen from the dead, He invites us to assert His Kingdom to a confused people who need Jesus’ truth and freedom.  

Blaze with me a path between cowardice and violence. ‘The Kingdom of God, in the world, yet not of the world, throws light on the order of society, while grace penetrates that order and gives it life…in union with all people of goodwill, Christians, especially the laity, are called to imbue human realities with the Gospel’ (JPII ‘On the Anniversary…’ 25).   

‘Jesus, would You renew both candidates after the fight of their lives? And would You endow Trump with what he needs to take next vital steps? We, the people, voted and ask Your grace for the one we chose. Please mobilize us to do what You ask of us in this season. Renew us in the One Thing, the good news of Jesus Christ. In His love, may we build up the foundations, beginning with marriage and family life.’  

‘Jesus, You are the King, and we are first citizens of Your Kingdom. Would you free us for You in this election season, not to hide but to shine? You’ve always asked nothing less from Your elect whom You have made ‘strangers in a strange land’ (Ex. 2:22). Here we are, a people who don’t know what to do but who look and listen to our King.  

“Father of all holiness, 

guide our hearts to You. 

Keep in the light of Your Truth 

all those You have freed from the darkness of unbelief. 

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son.”’ 

Amen