Spare a moment and a prayer for the political types, please and thank you. I’m one of them. Public policy is part of my vocation. Times like these, I’m tempted to wish it were otherwise.

This is a plague-on-both-your-houses time. Something C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity captures my attitude.

I feel a strong desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me – which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

We have to keep our eyes on the goal – the absolute goal of eternity in the Kingdom of God. Few things are harder for me to do. In politics, the goal is the next vote or the next election. In the greater scheme of things, in the Kingdom, the goal is something different.

Urgency is inherent to political work: this vote, this minute, this interview, this crisis, leading up to a defined point: a specific vote or a specific election. Votes and elections are important, but they’re not final.

Even though I’ve moved on from professional campaign work, I keep a sharp eye on candidates whose success matters to me. If a candidate is underperforming, I tend to mutter things like where is your ground game? How many voters have you met? How many doors have you knocked on? How many phone calls have you made?  

The all-consuming urgency sucks up all the spiritual oxygen. No wonder discourse turns nasty, discouragement hits hard, and I keep finding new ways to find fault with politicians and their supporters.

Urgency pulls me away from the Source of my vocation. Counteracting that pull requires more than an act of will. It takes the grace and mercy of God, beyond anything I deserve. I squander those gifts, and He keeps offering them anew, often in little ways.

There’s the Mass, of course. The Sacrifice, the gift of the Eucharist, is priceless. It’s also the best way to poke a finger in the figurative eye of savage times. One should never check a social media feed without praying first.

More grace comes from bishops who take faithful Catholic citizenship seriously and do what they can to keep me mindful of the long view. A friend in a neighboring state shared with me a letter from her bishop about this year’s election. His closing paragraph is balm for my agitated spirit.

My final encouragement is to be people of “Good News,” doing and saying only the good things that men and women need to hear, things that will lift them up. There is already too much anger, vitriol, and incivility in our culture today. We do not need to add to it but instead apply a cure: kindness, charity, and mutual respect for each other as brothers and sisters created in the image of God. (Bishop Christopher J. Coyne, Diocese of Burlington)

You’re a channel of grace every time you speak or post about an election or news event without resorting to invective. You’re ministering to me and who knows how many others when you bring charity and discernment to your political communications. I’ll never stop needing good examples.

A prominent Christian commentator recently warned about “merely” praying during election season, as though prayer were somehow keeping us from our real tasks. I take issue with that. There’s nothing “mere” about calling on the Lord for healing and wisdom, or about upholding one another in prayer in challenging times.

There are no saviors on any ballot. The right to life, among other things, is in for more rough treatment in our country, regardless of an election’s outcome. How we meet that challenge is going to depend on grace. That means prayer. No fair leaving political creatures to their own devices in thorny times like these.