(Please read the passage cited above first.)
My sisters and brothers,
In today’s passage from Romans, I hear St Paul tell us that we owe nothing to anyone, except to love them. In his letter to the Romans, Paul had written to Jewish people and Gentiles as well. He said that the Israelites would always be God’s chosen people and that the Gentiles of his day (and ours) were on an equal footing with them. We are all equal. We are one.
There is only one Lord; there is only one Christ; there is only one God. All of us people are one so far as this one God is concerned.
For us, there are no Democrats and Republicans, no friends and enemies, no liberals and conservatives: there is only one God. Why do we have hostilities among politicians, between citizens and non-citizens, between management and labor, between one political party and another? We have only one obligation to keep: to love one another.
We no longer have distinctions between Jewish persons and Gentiles, between slave and free, between man and woman, between Democrat and Republican, between citizen and non-citizen, between me and you because we are all one in Christ Jesus.
The obligation about which St Paul wrote is for each and everyone one of us without exception. We are not allowed to pick and choose: we must love all people.
Baptism and the spiritual and material things we have are things we have received from God as gifts from God. They are not things we have earned, but gifts. The forgiveness of our sins and the mercy God shows us do not flow from what we deserve, but from God’s gifts. Nothing is ours from ourselves.
Democrats can be faithful Catholics and Republicans likewise can be faithful Catholics. Democrats and Republicans can join one another here at Mass, other places for meals and share in the same citizenship. There is one obligation, that they we love one another, them and us, as we love ourselves.