People ask me how I, as a Catholic, can support Donald Trump. They list his failures. They count his sins. They say a man like that cannot possibly be chosen by God for anything good. And every time I hear that argument, I think of Cyrus.
Cyrus was a pagan king. He did not worship God. He did not go to temple. He did not speak the right words or follow the right rules. And yet God called him by name in the book of Isaiah, five hundred years before he was even born, and said: he is my shepherd. He will do what I want done.
God used a pagan king to free His people from captivity. Think about that for a moment. Not a priest. Not a prophet. A pagan king who did not even know God's name. Because God is not looking for the most polished man in the room. He is looking for the one who will do the job.
David committed adultery and had a man killed to cover it up. Moses had a temper that cost him the Promised Land. Saul of Tarsus spent years hunting down Christians before God knocked him off his horse and turned him into the greatest missionary the Church has ever seen. The Bible is not a book about perfect people. It is a book about what God can do with imperfect ones.
I am not telling you Donald Trump is a saint. He is not. I am telling you that when I watch a man survive two impeachments, 91 criminal charges, an assassination attempt, and the full force of the most powerful institutions in the world, and then walk back into the White House, I do not think that is just politics. I think that is something worth paying attention to.
The anointing does not always look the way we expect it to. It did not look right when David was chosen over his older brothers. It did not look right when God picked a stuttering shepherd to stand before Pharaoh. It rarely looks the way we expect.
But the fruits do not lie. And the story is not over yet.
— Father Thomas