Responsibilities of Citizenship
Homily for July 5, 2026: Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Our first reading today might turn our thoughts back a few months to Holy Week – or maybe even the Feast of Christ the King – as it tells us of our King, coming to us meek and riding on an ass.
I find it an especially interesting image to contemplate this weekend as we celebrate two-hundred fifty years since we as a nation separated ourself from the rule of kings. A time when we instituted a form of government in which the highest office is addressed not as Majesty or Highness but by the remarkably egalitarian title, “Mister President.”
Similarly, the Prophet Zechariah undercuts our common understanding of what a King should be. Our King, he says, will banish chariots and horses and weapons of war – all the marks of imperial power. He comes to us meek, and mounted rather ridiculously on a lowly beast of burden, proclaiming peace to all nations. The prophet’s message is clear: this is not a King as the World understands Kings.
We see this even today in the news – World Leaders going to war as our spiritual leaders call for peace. And in this ideological feud between a president and a pope, we can see an embodiment of the struggle each of us endures within our own hearts – the struggle of Worldly values against our Christian ideals. What St. Paul in our second reading today describes as Flesh versus Spirit. Finding that balance between good Citizenship and our Catholic faith.
Pope Leo, in his recent letter commemorating the 250th Anniversary of our Nation, reminds us that “faith — far from standing in opposition to the responsibilities of citizenship — lends new vigor to the pursuit of justice, peace and the common good, bringing to perfection every natural gift bestowed by the Creator.”
Christ comes to us to lift up all who are falling and raise up all who are bowed down, as we hear in our responsorial psalm. In the Gospel he calls to himself all who labor and are burdened, promising them rest – a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light. A far cry indeed from the so-called “Protestant work ethic” that dominates the worldly values of our culture.
And as members of His Body, as those who become what we receive today in the Eucharist, we too are called to that radical love for one another, especially for those who are burdened, falling, or bowed down.
In the realm of the worldly versus spiritual, of political versus religious, there is room for debate over how exactly we take on this mandate to care for the poor, the lowly, and the oppressed.
Pope Leo XIII, the grandfather of modern Catholic Social Teaching, wrote in 1893 that the State does have a right and even a moral duty to take action against economic and social inequalities.
On the other hand, one of my spiritual heroes, Dorothy Day, objected to the institution of government welfare programs, saying care for the poor should not be the state’s responsibility, but each of ours – individually as Catholics, and collectively as the Church.
The thing about that, though, is that she didn’t just claim that as an ideal. She actually lived it. In the midst of the poorest neighborhoods of Depression-era New York City she opened her home and her kitchen, sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry, serving the needs of the multitudes that lined up outside her door.
To those who might agree with her that government should not be involved in charity, the witness of her life stands as a challenge: okay then, let’s get to it.