Divine “Election”

Fra Angelico, Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven, National Gallery of London (NG 663.1), early 1420s. Poplar, 33 × 74 cm

If you wanted the opposite of the Communion of Saints, it would be some experience where division instead of communion comes to identify people at their core. It would look like American politics. Ever year, people are more and more convinced that they are right. Ever year, people are more convinced that if you do not vote for them or for their party, everything is going to hell.

Don’t get me wrong: we are likely in a crucial time of human history and in our country. It may be that everything is about to fall apart. But if that’s true, the answer will be Someone who draws us together, not someone who convinces us of our own rightness.

This is what the Saints are crying out for: “Salvation is from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” He is our happiness and He is our justice.

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There is a lot of talk from the Democratic Party right now about the end of democracy, the climactic eschatological moment in which this all comes to an end…unless you vote for [insert candidate here]. First of all, if someone said this in a relationship, any therapist could identify this as a guilt trip designed to keep the less powerful party in a relationship.

Second, while the end may indeed be nigh, what I find irritating in these suggestions is that the people making them are always enormously confident that they had nothing whatsoever to do with democracy’s decline. Is that true? What sort of democracy can flourish, for instance, when it defends the ability of parts of its populace to eliminate other parts of its populace, the future electorate?

One can observe this without ignoring the Trumpian depredations.

The fact that there is a society beyond this one, the Communion of Saints, living in a City beyond this one, can be a bracing breath to remind us this is not all there is. And that we are not yet fully righteous.