Inauguration Day is here, and a new administration is taking control in Washington, promising sweeping changes.
Like any election year, the nation spent 2024 preoccupied by political power — but this year seemed worse. We saw unprecedented violence, with two assassination attempts; intense civil discord, as political opponents painted each other in denigrating terms; and fundamental issues at stake — life, personal identity and immigration.
Now, both sides have been bruised and hurt. Christians have a specific role to play in cases like this.
St. Luke the Evangelist points to two different bad attitudes of Christians regarding politics.
After the Resurrection in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus meets Cleopas and another disciple walking, downcast away from Jerusalem
They tell him the “prophet” Jesus the Nazarene has been killed and all is lost. Amazingly, even the news of the Resurrection, hasn’t cheered them up. “We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel,” they say.
Political power is front and center again at the beginning of Acts when the disciples meet Jesus at the Ascension. “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” they ask.
In the first case, disciples think the crucifixion is a political loss. In the second, they want the Ascension to be a political victory. In both cases they are mistaken. He gives the downcast disciples the Eucharist and he gives the impatient apostles the Holy Spirit.
He wants them to spread not political power but his kingdom of love and unity, his body and blood and his life giving Spirit, through the sacraments.
He says the same thing to us in 2025: Only love can build the future we want
After such a harsh battle, both the “winners” and the “losers” have work to do.
The winners will be tempted to lord it over their opponents, ridicule and dismiss them. The losers will be tempted to lash out at the winners, seizing on every negative piece of news to paint them as wicked. Both sides have their YouTube commentators stoking their outrage, and the more both sides indulge their darkest angels, the further the two sides will drift apart.
Love is a far better strategy, for both. You may have heard people telling stories about how they changed their minds during the last campaign. Because of the stark contrast between the two candidates, people who had been certain of one position their whole lives entertained another for the first time.
When the people they met were warm and welcoming, they were willing to change their whole perspective. When the people they met were intolerant and disapproving, they fled.
That is how love works.
“The heart is commonly reached, not through reason” but by testimony, St. John Henry Newman said. “Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.”
Today, more than ever, people are longing for love and respect. Whoever provides it will be the next “winner.”
Love and respect are also needed in two key policy issues.
The immigration issue and the abortion issue underwent a sea change in the last election.
Pope Francis included both immigrants and the unborn in his World Day of Peace message when he said,
“I also ask for a firm commitment to respect for the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person can cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to a future of prosperity and happiness for themselves and for their children.”
One of the greatest tragedies of the past election cycle was the emergence of a new consensus against the right to life. Both parties’ platforms now countenance the destruction of human life, via the deadly baby-making labs of IVF, and in all but late-term abortions.
And on immigration, on the one hand, the sheer number of immigrants who entered the country without even an interview worries even longtime supporters of immigration, and the conflation of all immigrants as violent offenders or drug-dealers is dangerous.
Pope Francis voiced what many Americans Catholics think when he spoke on 60 Minutes in 2024.
“To close the border and leave them there, that is madness. The migrant has to be received,” he said, but added: “There after, you see how you are going to deal with him. Maybe you have to send him back, I don’t know, but each case ought to be considered humanely.”
Since most immigrants come from Catholic countries, the Church has to be at the center of efforts to welcome immigrants or to re-patriate them — to serve their human and spiritual needs and defend their dignity.
American politics has had plenty of heat. Now it needs more light.
“You are the light of the world,” Jesus said.
“The Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body,” said Diognetus.
The world needs both, now more than ever.
