by Johnny Zokovitch
Election Day this year coincided with the feast day of St. Martin de Porres, the patron saint of racial and social justice. Martin was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a young, freed black slave; he was raised in terrible poverty after his father rejected him because of his dark skin. As an adult, Martin dedicated himself to working alongside the impoverished and oppressed.
All throughout Election Day, I held the witness of Martin foremost in my thoughts.
The gospel reading for his feast day is taken from Matthew 22:34-40. Matthew draws on the shema, the sacred Jewish profession of faith, when responding to the question, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
In its time, it was a radical confession that opposed the Jewish people’s propensity toward idolatry, the worship of other gods. It emphasizes both God’s singularity as the ONLY God of the Israelites but it also asserts the necessity of complete allegiance to this God—no partial commitment, no divided loyalties, no hedging one’s bet by keeping the door open to other gods just in case.
But Jesus doesn’t stop with the shema. He goes on to offer a second commandment, citing it as akin to the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In a way, we as Christians in the United States of America, are never more susceptible to betraying both love of God and love of neighbor than during an election year. The passion in the practice of what amounts to our national religion is an easy idolatry to fall prey to.
At morning Mass on Wednesday, the day after the election, someone offered up during the prayers of the faithful a prayer that the results might serve as a repudiation of policies rooted in hate and division and become the first steps toward decency and humanity. While I have little historical trust in anyone who pulls the levers of power in this empire in which we live, I appreciated the aching tenderness of the hope that things might be different, might be better.
May the time ahead be defined by how we welcome and care for our immigrant sisters and brothers, instead of threatening them with detention and deportation. May the time ahead celebrate the dignity of our neighbors who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. May we dismantle Christian nationalism, rebuking the white supremacy and misogyny that has no place in a theology built around a God who is love. May the days ahead see our sick healed without worry about the cost, our hungry be fed, our homeless sheltered in dignity, our children taught without the threat of violence, and all of creation cherished and restored and nurtured. May our economy be shaped by the needs of the many not for the profit of the few, with a preferential option for those who have long suffered impoverishment and marginalization.
But no matter what happens in these days that follow this election, what we are about, as followers of Jesus, remains the same. Our faith is not in powers and principalities, not in systems and empires, not in politicians or parties. As the reading from Matthew recalls to us, we bind ourselves to God and God alone, and we bind ourselves to each other – to our neighbors – because that is how we show we are bound to God.
St. Martin de Porres drew on his own experience of poverty and prejudice in his commitment to the “poor, rejected Christ,” showing his total love for God by his solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized and working alongside them for a world where poverty and prejudice were no more. May we, like Martin, root our faith in love of God and neighbor, not in the precarity of the promise of the political moment.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.