Citizens of two cities

Readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

One of the last documents to be promulgated from Vatican II is Gaudium et spes, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Today’s Gospel might be a good reason to revisit the Church’s teaching from this document on our civic responsibility and its close relationship to our religious duties:

The Council exhorts Christians, as citizens of both cities, to perform their duties faithfully in the spirit of the Gospel. It is a mistake to think that, because we have here no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come, we are entitled to shirk our earthly responsibilities; this is to forget that by our faith we are bound all the more to fulfill these responsibilities according to the vocation of each one. But it is no less mistaken to think that we may immerse ourselves in earthly activities as if these latter were utterly foreign to religion, and religion were nothing more than the fulfillment of acts of worship and the observance of a few moral obligations. One of the gravest errors of our time is the dichotomy between the faith which many profess and the practice of their daily lives. (43)

This post was first published on the planner page for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, in “GIA Quarterly: A Liturgical Music Journal,” Vol 28, No 3.

Image credit: NeONBRAND, unsplash, CC0.