(Isaiah
45:1, 4-6; 1st. Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21)
In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah we learned that Israel’s God is the only Lord and Ruler of all that is, and that He even inspires certain decisively important events in the course of human history:
For Jacob My servant's sake, and
Israel My elect, I the Lord have named Cyrus, though you have not known Me; I
will gird you, though you have not known Me.
St. Paul in our second reading
took up that appreciation of God’s authority when he wrote:
Our gospel did not come to you in
word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit
and with full conviction, as you know what kind of persons we were among
you for your sake.
Dear People of God, how Mother
Church today needs such ‘persons’ whose faith is for them a source of holy
power and firm conviction for the service of Jesus Who is the same yesterday, today,
and for ever, and of His Church commissioned to offer salvation to all mankind!
A disturbing aspect of modern
Church life, however, is the growing number of ordinary ‘little’ Catholics who
are afraid to humbly confess Jesus in their daily way of life or witness
openly to Him when necessary. They fail Jesus because His teaching
is openly mocked by popular figures whose pleasures and pursuits exemplify
Jesus’ words – ‘an evil and adulterous generation’ -- and mockery from their
peers is indeed something that all school-children fear, perhaps most of all.
Many ‘more prominent’ figures
in Mother Church herself today – acting not from fear but from arrogance and
self-seeking -- betray Jesus by looking closely at the largely pagan society around,
observe what is happening there -- especially in matters of sexual morality and
social responsibility -- and then try to make the Jesus we know -- the traditional
Jesus of countless martyrs and saints, men, women and children, the Jesus
proclaimed and fought for by St. Paul and all the Apostles in the Holy Spirit and with full
conviction, the Jesus of the Gospels -- and then, I say,they try to
make that Jesus ‘popular’ …. somehow
able to be fitted in seamlessly with pagan society’s popular practices and
‘beliefs’!
Nowhere, dear People of
God, did Jesus ever say that His disciples, His Church, would be popular, with
‘bums on all seats in their Churches’. He did indeed say that His Gospel was to be
preached to all, but not that it would be accepted by all, or
even by the majority. In fact, He did give
voice to one of His most solemn and considered warnings:
When the Son of Man comes, will He
find faith on earth? (Luke 18:8)
Certain passages of our New
Testament are now regularly omitted in liturgical readings; how many more will
have to be omitted in future to accommodate yet more modern ‘popular sensitivities’, to allow those whose public words
or open life-style contradict the Gospel, still pretend to be acceptable to or at
home with Mother Church?
There are other passages in
today’s Gospel reading relevant to our times in which political violence and
racial terrorism seek to cover themselves with a cloak of so-called moral
sensitivity or religious devotion, for there we are clearly shown the Pharisees
and the Herodians trying -- as consummate hypocrites -- to lull Jesus into a
sense of false security:
Teacher, we know that You are
true and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You
do not regard the person of men.
They were using such flattery to
soften up Jesus before the putting to Him the punch question that was ready on
their lips:
Tell
us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or
not?"
The idea was, of course, to
get Jesus into most serious trouble. If He
were to have said it was right to pay taxes, then those patriotic Jews and the
Zealot agitators would have decried Him as some sort of traitor or
quisling. On the other hand, had Jesus
said it was wrong to pay the taxes, then the Romans would have been informed
immediately and they would have deemed it necessary to seek Jesus out as one potentially
troublesome and deal with Him accordingly; which, of course, was just what the
Pharisees and the Temple hierarchy wanted.
Jesus was not going to fall
into the trap. He answered them:
Show Me the tax money." So they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, "Whose image and
inscription is this?" They said to
Him, "Caesar's." And He said
to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to
God the things that are God's."
Oh! dear People of God, who
can fail to recognize the beauty of God’s wisdom in those wonderful
words spoken in such a situation? That
beauty -- both simple and sublime -- is something for us to admire and contemplate
most gratefully before God!! But now, at
this moment, gathered here as disciples of Jesus wanting to learn from Him how
to worship and serve the Father, let us consider something of the implications
of those words and perhaps understand Jesus’ attitude of mind and heart a
little better.
Those words of flattery spoken
by the Pharisees and Herodians were meant to ensnare Jesus, and the attitudes
they sought to promote are a perennial temptation and conceit for Christians of
all ages; and today we should -- like our Blessed Lord -- be quick to recognise
their poison and strong to reject their subtle infiltration into our lives.
We, as disciples of Jesus, are
called to lead good lives, that is, lives of integrity before God not
conformity with society’s – be it lay society or Church society -- prevailing
modern standards and judgements; we have to try to live up to the role set
before us in Jesus’ Scriptures and called for in the traditional teaching of
Mother Church. However, knowing full well
that our sins are many and our weaknesses manifest to the eyes of God, we must
seek to assimilate this awareness of faith more and more fully and deeply into
our personal self-consciousness, so that our Christian integrity may ever be ‘instinctively’
accompanied and embellished by a corresponding degree of humility, truly vigilant
lest we ever begin to slide into an easy acceptance of the demands or wishes of
men, as ever, willing and wanting to give immediate rewards of praise for
compliance with their views.
Jesus Himself was not in any
way swayed by such flatteries: His personal integrity would always and only be
used to glorify His Father and promote the true well-being of all those who
heard and listened to His words; and so, His resolute independence of men and
their opinions would be -- always and only -- the other face of His constant
care to be free to serve them, for Jesus was always the Servant, never a
braggart. Nevertheless, His requirement
of independence made it necessary for Him to be fearless, and so, here, He
separated State and Religion for the first time. Until Jesus came the state had been in total
charge of religion: Emperors were worshipped as gods in the all-powerful Roman
state. And therefore, those famous and
most beautiful words of Jesus:
Render therefore to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,
are not only wonderfully wise
words, they were also brave words for those times.
People of God, only the power of the Holy Spirit and the assured commitment to Jesus which our faith affords us can enable us to be independent and free in our proclamation of and witness to our Catholic and Christian faith before the society in which we find ourselves today. However, we must never allow such aspirations to become insidiously perverted so as to serve our own personal pride or profit. We are, above all, disciples and servants of Jesus, and, at all times and in all situations, we must seek -- in Him and by His Spirit -- to glorify God our Father. Therefore, we must never forget that we are, individually, members of His People, of His family, of His Body, and consequently we can never think of ourselves as independent of our brothers and sisters in Christ: our own personal integrity and independence must be consonant with and embrace the authentic Christian good of all those for whom Christ died. Just as true glory can only be given to God the Father in and through the whole Body of Christ, Head and members, so also, praise and profit can only come to us as living members of the whole Body of those who, in accordance with the Father's will and the working of His Holy Spirit, are being led to share in the fullness of salvation won for them by Jesus.
