Joy and politics
“Do something.” That was one of the refrains of the recent Democratic convention. It was a brilliant emotional play for votes — many of the speakers clearly got a memo about the need to alleviate the anxiety of the age and our lives. It likely has a resonance that no policy proposal would.
Earlier this summer, Catholics filled Lucas Stadium in Indianapolis to talk about hunger; hunger for something more than certainly politics can ever provide.
Hunger for something eternal. Monsignor James Shea said: “God has made us so that we are incomplete unless we are feeding on Him.
Human beings are famished for God … We have to feed on God or something else — and whatever that something else is, it will leave us hungry.”
Talking about his record as governor of Minnesota, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz said during the convention: “We also protected reproductive freedom because, in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make. And even if we wouldn’t make the same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a Golden Rule — mind your own damn business.”
Perhaps it was an attempt to appeal to Trump voters who never cared about abortion as a human-rights issue anyway. (They might be legion, since the Republican party changed its platform, no longer wanting to end abortion in America.)
There was a fair amount of talk of God and prayer during the Democratic convention. Even more than the superficial kind typical to politics. And, yet there was an insistence that the party was going to somehow deliver that which is only supernatural rather than political.
When I was in college, Pope John Paul II had a book published titled “Crossing the Threshold of Hope.” It was about a different kind of hope than a political convention can pretend to provide.
The “essential joy of creation is completed by the joy of salvation, by the joy of redemption,” he wrote. He wrote: “The Gospel, above all, is a great joy for the salvation of man. The Creator of man is also his Redeemer. Salvation not only confronts evil in each of its existing forms in this world but proclaims victory over evil.”
At least at one point during the Democratic convention, there was mention of Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ “truth” — as if it is something unique. This is one of the chief causes of the anxieties of our times: denial of universal truth.
In his book on hope, John Paul wrote: “The cause of our joy is to give us the strength to defeat evil and to embrace the divine filiation which constitutes the essence of the Good News.
God gives this power to humankind through Christ.”
Joy requires understanding that there is evil.
John Paul wrote: “The work of redemption is to elevate the work of creation to a new level. Creation is permeated with a redemptive sanctification, even a divinization. It comes as if drawn to the sphere of the divinity and of the intimate life of God.”
That’s the thing: We are created beings. And we are made for more than a Tuesday in November can ever deliver.
The winner of this presidential election won’t be the savior or the end of us.
The daily choices we make in our human encounters matter more — whatever the political messages you are being bombarded with say.
Don’t look to politics for hope and joy. It’s smart messaging, but it will always disappoint.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book “A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living.”
She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan’s pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview. com.
