Make America God's Again | Daily Reflection

To read the texts click on the texts: Jer 7:23-28;Lk11:14-23

Today, the Word of God confronts us with a very simple but unsettling invitation:

While the first reading, in the book of Jeremiah, God says, “Listen to my voice… then I will be your God, and you shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 7:23).

The psalm echoes the same plea: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

And then in the Gospel, Jesus sharpens this point even further, saying, “Whoever is not with me (in other words, whoever does not listen to my voice and does not do my Father’s will) is against me.”

While these words invite us to make a choice, to decide whose side we are on, they could sound specifically urgent and perhaps threatening in a moment like this.

We live in a time of deep division—nations against nations, communities against communities, ideologies against ideologies— polarizations, discriminations, wars, weapons, distrust, and where fear has become a kind of silent policy.

But the Gospel asks a deeper question: Whose kingdom are we building?

Saint Ignatius invites us to think about this in the contemplation on the Two Standards in the Spiritual Exercises as: The kingdom of the devil marked by Riches, Pride, and Honor, or the Kingdom of Christ characterized by exactly the opposites: Poverty (both spiritual/physical), Humility, and Contempt.

Even though it is highly tempting to apply these standards immediately to our current politics or society, it nevertheless applies to our hearts as well.

We cannot claim to build the kingdom of Christ, who is the Prince of Peace, while quietly accepting a culture that glorifies violence, domination, wars, and the power of division and the sword.

And Jesus is very clear elsewhere in the Gospel: “Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

Violence may promise security, but in the end, it only multiplies suffering. And wherever there is suffering in the world, there is no real peace. And where there is no peace, no one is truly free.

Think about the places in the world today where bombs fall as we speak. In those places, there may be victory or defeat, but there is also suffering, pain, losses, bloodshed, and rarely peace.

And this is where the Lenten invitation becomes very concrete. It invites us not just to “giving things up”. But very much also to love differently, to love like the way Jesus did and would do even today.

In other words, it is an invitation to give Jesus/God a chance. It is about deciding again whose side we want to be on, because Jesus says today: “Anyone who is not with me is against me.”

This “to be with Christ” means to stand with Him who heals, not with the powers that wound. It means believing

that radical humility is stronger than pride,

that love is stronger than fear,

that forgiveness is stronger than vengeance,

that mercy is stronger than violence,

and that conversation is more powerful than weapons of mass destruction.

Only when we take God’s side in this way can we truly become God’s people. Applying it to our own context, it is only then that we could (let me be the first one to say this) Make America God’s Again, if you need a different take on the M A G A.

So today, let’s ask ourselves these simple questions, both individually and collectively:

Whose side do I stand on currently?

Am I willing to give God a chance?

In so doing, am I willing to make my life, my family, my community, my country, and America, God’s again?