The Great Commandments
November 5, 2006

Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading 1: Deut. 6:2–6

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 18:2–3, 3–4, 47, 51

Reading 2: Heb. 7:23–28

Gospel: Mk. 12:28b–34

Link to Readings

By Father Frank Pavone

Both from Moses and from the Lord Jesus Christ we hear today the greatest of all the commandments—to love the Lord our God with our whole being and above all else! The second commandment is like it: We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. These words give joy and strength to the soul, because they focus us in on our key duties in life. Above and beyond any other duties—in fact, at the heart and core of every other duty—is the call to love God and others. Beyond aiming to please anyone else, we must in everything please the Lord.

Christ puts the second commandment together with the first. "There is no other commandment greater than these." The close relationship between these two commandments is discussed at length in the First Letter of John, in which he makes it clear that the failure to love the neighbor we see, and to attend to his needs, makes it impossible to love the God we do not see. Religious piety is never meant to turn us in on ourselves, but rather to make us more attentive and responsive to the needs of others, especially the vulnerable. We love our neighbor "like ourselves," which means that we recognize our neighbor as a person like ourselves, no matter how different they may seem. This is a universal command. There is no room here for any kind of discrimination, prejudice, or exclusion.

Nowhere is the temptation to exclude our neighbor more powerful and destructive than in the way our society excludes unborn children from the protection of their lives. Nothing destroys more human life than abortion. Some say the unborn are too small, or too unlike us in their characteristics, to be considered a neighbor, a person. But the second commandment requires that we see every human being as a neighbor "like ourselves," and therefore love them.

Both Moses and Jesus spoke of these commands in the context of the Covenant—the relationship between God and His people. We are responsible to God and each other as individuals, and we are responsible to God and each other as a society, a nation, a culture. One of the many ways we shape that culture and live out those responsibilities is in the way we vote. We have the opportunity and duty to do so this coming Tuesday in our nation’s midterm elections. What do the elections have to do with the Covenant and with the commandments to love God and our neighbor?

Either Faithfulness or Rebellion—Then and Now

Throughout the Old Testament you read the history of the kings who ruled God’s people, and you see that the way that the king acted was either to lead the people to renew their faithfulness to the Covenant or lead the people in rebellion against the Covenant. It was one way or the other, and when you read the history of the Old Testament, it’s like a pendulum swinging back and forth.

You have the faithful kings. They led the people in the ways of God and the land was blessed. Then you had the unfaithful kings. They led the people in sin and the land was cursed because God allowed their enemies to come in and overrun them—and that was not a political problem, that was a spiritual problem. The Old Testament is theological history. People who rebelled against God suffered not only spiritually, they suffered politically.

And so it is today. Our leaders in civil government will either—and this may be explicit or implicit—they will either lead us in the ways of God or they will lead us in rebellion against God. Now I’m not saying that people get up and say, "Let’s rebel against God." I’m saying they get up and say, for example, "Marriage is not necessarily between a man and a woman. We want to pass laws to legitimize gay marriages." Now you tell me if that’s any better than King Ahab setting up sacred pillars to Baal and giving the people an opportunity for false worship.

Brothers and sisters, if we think for one minute that government has the authority to change God’s plan for marriage, we might as well go worship at some kind of temple of an idol because we’re violating the Covenant in the same way. And if we choose, by voting, to put someone in office who’s going to do the same thing we might as well go on Sunday to a temple of idols to worship. We might as well do that because we are violating the Covenant.

Or of course those who will stand up and say "Hey, I want to be your leader, folks, I want to be your senator, I want to be your governor, I want to be your president, I want to be a judge, but I think it’s OK for the government to allow the killing of unborn children. As long as the mother says so I’m not going to interfere with that. I’m pro-choice."

You think if somebody votes for a person like that, that they’re violating the Covenant in some way? Do you think there’s some responsibility there before God? That when we choose the people who are going to lead us we somehow take account of whether or not they respect the Covenant? We take some account as to whether or not those who are going to pass laws in our society have any notion of a higher law to which they and we together are subject, or of a command to love God and neighbor?

Brothers and sisters, we don’t have our leaders today setting up false churches. But when they claim the authority to throw the unborn away or to redefine marriage or any number of other things that run totally contrary to the Gospel . . . well, then, they are leading us into false worship. And we have a duty, not only an opportunity, a duty to take active part in the process by which these people are either put in to office or thrown out of office.

Get Them Out!

Let me tell you honestly that one of the questions I get most frequently all around the country is, "When are the Bishops going to start excommunicating pro-choice Catholic politicians?" Now, this question is not only asked in our country but is asked throughout the world. I’m not asking that question right now. I’m not saying to our spiritual leaders what they should do. All I’m saying is this question is constant, and one of the answers I heard to this question from someone in Rome was, "Well, you know, in democracies you have a way of dealing with this and it’s called elections." Get them out! Get them out. As Christian people, if they’re leading you down a non-Christian path, vote in somebody else.

So I want to ask a few questions, but before I ask the questions, I want to point out to you the critical importance of the midterm elections that we are about to have this Tuesday. Unlike two years ago, we’re not electing a President. But this election coming up is just as important. Why? Because when we talk about such things as our nation’s policies about marriage and about the protection of life, we’re not simply talking about edicts of the President. We’re talking also about decisions of judges and we’re talking about actions of Congress.

In this midterm election we are going to be electing a significant number of people in the Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Now, who those people are, and what party is in power, and what they believe about such fundamental things as life, family, marriage, and Christian values will determine not only what kinds of laws get put before the President to either sign or to veto, but it will also determine what kind of laws even get out of committee.

How Your Vote Affects the Supreme Court

Understand the process of how laws come about. You can have St. Paul sitting in a seat in Congress, but any laws that he himself puts forward are not going to go anywhere if the people in charge of the committees don’t let them go anywhere, if they don’t let them come to a consideration by the full body of the Congress. In other words, the party that’s in power and the philosophies of that party are going to determine whether laws that contradict that way of thinking even see the light of day or are even considered or debated, even if they may have the ultimate support of the President. If they don’t even get out of committee and get to a vote, the President can’t sign them.

And so it is with judges. Think about some of the radical changes that have taken place in our culture over the past generation. Staring us in the face, obviously, is the legalization of abortion. That didn’t come about because people voted for it. That came about because of the decision of unelected judges. And not only at the level of the Supreme Court but at the level of the Federal Circuit Courts. You have so many judges in place who make, for all practical purposes, the final decisions about questions of life, morality, family and so forth. They have the final decisions because some 98% of cases don’t get to the Supreme Court . . . cases which, in other words, are proposed to the Court, even if they get that far.

Some may say, "We’re going to take this to the Supreme Court." But the Supreme Court can only do so much and can only handle about 2% of the cases that are presented to it, which means (and again, on questions that deeply effect Christian morality and the direction our Nation goes) most of these decisions rest with judges on a lower level than the Supreme Court.

Now, why am I going into this? Because brothers and sisters, it’s the United States Senate that confirms these judges. It’s the President that makes the nominations and then the Senate and the people sitting in those chairs make the decision as to whether or not this man or this woman will end up having the awesome obligation of judging such things that affect the lives of all of us. In other words, even though the judges are not elected, in a sense they are, indirectly, when you elect the people that are going to serve in the United States Senate.

So whether or not you go to the polls this Tuesday, whether or not you vote, and how you vote is so critically important to the future of the Covenant in this country and in the world!

Two Simple Questions

Let’s ask two simple questions. Are you planning to vote? Our United States Bishops issued their document "Living the Gospel of Life" in 1998. In that document they tell us that participation in the election process is an obligation for us—not an option, an obligation. To take part in this process is a virtue. It is not a virtue to stay home and just pray on Election Day. We’ve got to get out there.

Secondly, do you know anything about the people whose names are going to be on that ballot when you walk into that voting booth? Do you know anything about who’s running in your state? For the United States Senate, for Congress? Do you know these people?

If not, you’ve still got plenty of time to find out who they are and whether, using a scriptural analogy, they are going to lead us in the ways of the Covenant or are going to set up false places of idol worship and lead us into sin. I’m not saying that they’re responsible for our sins. I’m saying that they’re responsible for the moral climate of this country and ultimately of the world. And if they’re responsible, ultimately it’s not they but we who are responsible because they get in only by our vote or by our not voting.

God has given us his great commands, and he has given us everything we need to fulfill them. Let’s thank him today for the opportunity to fulfill them each day of our lives, including by the way we vote! God bless you.

Father Frank Pavone is the national director for Priests for Life and a member of CUF's advisory council. He is a contrubutor to Lay Witness magazine.

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