Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Mary issued the following announcement on Oct. 18

By coincidence, these readings appear during election time. They might not tell us how to vote, but they do throw some light on the notion of civic duty. Cyrus in the first reading was the Persian king whose foreign policy allowed conquered and displaced people to return to their homelands, even though they would still be under Persian control. In the Isaian passage, this foreign king is called the Lord’s anointed and is blessed by God despite the fact that he is unaware of it. This suggests that even those who do not know or worship the God of Israel can be competent civic leaders as long as they work for the benefit of their citizenry.

The Gospel story is a bit more complex. Jewish law banned making a graven image of a person, as was found on Roman coins. This means that those trying to trap Jesus exposed their own violation of the law by possessing such a coin. Jesus did not condemn the Romans for casting such coins. Rather, he says that political leaders deserve our civic allegiance. How the Jews were to accomplish this without using forbidden Roman coins isn’t explained. But then, how civic-minded people are to uphold complicated political and social values today is hard to explain as well. This is one of the challenges of belonging to a pluralist society. No political ticket perfectly mirrors all of the gospel values. Our civic duty is to decide which values we should advance.

Original source can be found here.