Thoughts for Election Day

"Statesmen, responsible as they are for the common good of their own nation and at the same time for the well-being of the whole world, are very much dependent on the opinions and convictions of the general public. their efforts to secure peace are of no avail as long as men are divided or set against each other by feelings of hostility, contempt and distrust, by racial hatred or by inflexible ideologies. There is then a very great and urgent need to reeducate men and to provide fresh inspiration in the field of public opinion....We must all undergo a change of heart."
Gaudium et spes #82

"Being in some respects what the name [Christian] implies, but in others inclining toward the oppposite, is to cut oneself apart into a battleground where there are two factions one of good and one of evil, and thus one becomes truceless to oneself and inconsistent....Subjecting the spirit of the flesh to divine law, let us live peaceably, having been dissolved into the new and peaceful Man and having become one from two. For the definition of peace is harmony of dissonant parts. Once the civil war in our nature is expelled, then, we also, being at peace within ourselves, become peace, and reveal our having taken on the name of Christ as true and authentic.
--Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection