The election campaign period is ongoing as the Year of Mercy, silently like a river, flows into the hearts of people.
This current of mercy joins rivers traveling towards the sea of peace and fraternity to build up a world which is more just merciful and compassionate.
Pope Francis, together with Jewish and Islamic leaders, hopes that mercy could influence politics and political decisions that would promote the common good.
Where then is the place of mercy in civil society? Is it not true that in our subculture of impunity in favor of the rich and powerful, we need a culture of strict justice and the retribution which excludes any tinge of compassion and mercy? Let us take a second look and reconsider the vocation of a politician – that person tasked to enforce and uphold the rule of law and to work for the welfare of the people.
Chiara Lubich, foundress of the Focolare Movement once said, with regards to politics: “there is a true and proper political vocation. It is a personal calling that emerges from circumstances and is communicated through one’s conscience. Believers clearly discern God’s voice entrusting them with a task.
Even those too who do not adhere to any particular faith can feel the political calling, perhaps inspired by a social need, a minority group that needs help, a violated human right, or motivated by the desire to do something good for their city or nation.” It could be said that, like marriage or consecrated life, politics is a real calling, a vocation. Since the primary vocation of all men is to love and be loved, politics cannot but be a calling to love and serve.
Chiara described it as the love of all loves: “politics, when it is true to its vocation, creates and preserves those conditions that allow all other types of love to flourish: the love of young people who want to get married and so would need a house and employment; the love for knowledge and thus the need for schools and books etc… Thus, politics is the love of all loves. . .
Politics can be compared to the stem of a flower, which supports and nourishes the fresh unfolding of the petals of the community.” We cannot deny that the world is moving towards a globalized community where each nation feels it can no longer live as an isolated island. This can be true for political parties as well.
Chiara suggests that “the response to a political vocation is before all else an act of brotherhood.” In other words: this “living out of a political choice as a vocation to love leads us to understand that others, with a different political choice, can also be motivated by a vocation to love similar to ours.” … We should reach the point of loving the political party of the others as we love our own, knowing that neither party was born by chance, but each as the answer to an historical need within the community.
Brotherhood brings out the genuine values of each party and rebuilds the political life of a nation as a whole.” Politics is a gift and a vocation – a gift of and a call from God, as all powers come from above, and this power should be used to serve humanity especially the marginalized.
When justice and mercy truly meet, we witness “an even greater event in which we experience love as the foundation of true justice” (Misericodiae Vultus, 21) – a love which empowers the person and political parties to work for the common good of nations and societies, and a love which touches the core of humanity.
