31st Sunday of the Year (A) 2017

31^st. Sunday of Year (A)

(Malachi 1:14 - 2:2, 8-10; 1^st. Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13; Matthew 23:1-12)

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Jesus had just been targeted by the Herodians, then the Sadducees, and finally by the Pharisees:

This happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, 'They hated Me without a cause.'                  (John 15:25)

And after having confounded His opponents by the beauty of His truth, He then turned and:

spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.  Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do.”

To understand our Lord’s words, we must turn to another saying of His, speaking, this time, not about the scribes and Pharisees as teachers in Israel, but of His very own Self the supreme Teacher:

Jesus said, ‘My teaching is not My own but is from the One Who sent Me.  Whoever chooses to do His will shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own.  Whoever speaks on his own seeks his own glory, but whoever seeks the glory of the one who sent him is truthful and there is no wrong in him.

There you have the root meaning of those other words of Jesus:

                You have but one teacher, you have but one Father in heaven;

for those who sincerely choose, want to know and seek to do, God’s will, and who, to that end seek the best teaching available, your Father in heaven will guide you into the truth you so sincerely and perseveringly seek. 

One such ‘seat of Moses’ -- carved in stone -- has been found in an ancient synagogue: it was a seat of honour where he sat who was expounding the teaching of Moses to the people gathered in the synagogue for the Sabbath, and here, in this passage of the Gospel, Jesus acknowledges that the Pharisees were the teachers and guides for the synagogue at that time.   This is shown us again in St. John’s Gospel (3:1-10):

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?"  Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things?” 

That was the trouble with the Pharisees and their scribes: they knew too much about their own traditions and understood too little about the teaching and ways of God.  Moreover, they added so much to the teaching of Moses, as Jesus remarked:

                they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders;

in fact, there were 613 such prescriptions from the Scribes and Pharisees that could encumber and stifle the lives of people wanting to find God.  These were the subject of much synagogue teaching where too little of God’s basic revelation through Moses and the Prophets was taught, while too much attention was given to the embellishments of particular Pharisaic traditions and the personal opinions of individual scribes and rabbis; which is why the people so much appreciated Jesus when He spoke in the synagogue for, we are told (Luke 4:32):

They were astonished at His teaching, for His word was with authority.

Nevertheless, People of God, since Jesus, on this occasion, was speaking not directly to the Twelve who lived in His personal proximity, but to the multitudes of interested people and  crowds of disciples who were following Him from places He had passed by on His way to Jerusalem, that is, to more or less ordinary men and women who were devout enough to be seeking God but whose life-pattern was necessarily centred on making a living for themselves and their families, to such disciples and hearers Jesus had no hesitation in telling them to follow the teaching of the Pharisees and Scribes given in the name of Moses when, that is, on the seat of Moses they were authoritatively expounding Moses’ traditional teaching from the Scriptures in the synagogue.   In that we can recognize that Jesus in no way encouraged individual, self-established and self-promoting, teachers in the synagogue; for the essence of God’s teaching is that it is authoritative teaching and, as such, is necessarily handed down authoritatively, that is, in the name of God and, in these our days, on the authority of God’s Church.

Throughout the history of Mother Church great harm has been done to her by clerics and religious of scandalous lives on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by self-commissioned lay-people assuming and asserting a right to publicly promote their own personal understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ against the Gospel proclamation of Mother Church through her appointed, authoritative, ministers: a two-thonged scourge with clerics and religious living a distortion of the Christian life, and self-appointed lay preachers proclaiming a distortion of the Gospel.   And, of course, I am not now speaking simply of the past, for our modern times are still being ravaged by these perennial scourges. 

However, I prefer to continue now with the glories intended and established by God for His People as indicated to us in today’s readings.

The lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.

How little is that known and acknowledged today!  Many, many, possibly even a majority of present- day Catholics are most concerned about what people around them think and say, not about God’s will or His greater pleasure.  They want know what concerns them most, here and now; that is, how to be acceptable to others around them.

There the prophet Malachi shows forth the true function and purpose of those called to lead and serve God’s People: they are to be messengers of God’s saving truth and purpose for all who are seeking to know His will and to live their lives under the shelter of His wings.  Such priests (then and now) should seek God’s glory not their own renown; and -- always intending to serve the salvation of God’s People -- they must never adulterate His Word in order to pander to popular clamour.   St. Paul best expressed the spirit that should animate and characterize the priest of God:

We thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe; (and), affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.

Let us now regard the People of God as Jesus outlines them to us:

Therefore, whatever they (who legitimately occupy the chairs of leadership among God’s People) tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.

There, ‘observe’ is used with the meaning that it has in ‘observe the Sabbath’, ‘observe, keep the word, the words, of Jesus.  It is a word expressing not blind obedience but rather loving acceptance of what is of religious importance, a teaching to be embraced because it is the Lord’s.  Notice that it is only the truth and the will of God that can hold and determine His People, not the person of the minister:

                Do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do.

Since only the truth of God is good enough for God’s People it is not enough for anyone to claim in self-justification that such and such a person did, or that plenty of people were doing, the same as they themselves had done …. As the Psalmist said prophetically, ‘the Lord is my light and my salvation’, we should fear no other, neither should we trust in any other.  People of God, each and every one of you who is a living member of the Body of Christ is of a divine lineage, don’t ever fear or rely on what is merely flesh and blood.  That is, once again, what lies behind the words of Jesus to His disciples:

Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.   And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.

We all have, Malachi the prophet declared, one God who created us, and we all have one Father, Who, as Jesus revealed, calls us.  In order to fulfil our being and answer our calling here on earth each of us has been allocated a position in, and a function for, the Body of Christ our Saviour and Teacher. 

Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife. (1 Corinthians 7:27)

That is, whether you are married, bereaved, or single, God has a positive function, purpose, and position for you in His plan of salvation.  And confidently bearing in mind God’s careful planning and solicitousness for your presence and place at His inaugural and eternal feast of heaven, listen once again to Jesus (Luke 14:8-11):

When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, but when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place.  For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

At the end of our earthly service no one but the Father knows what will be our position in heaven.  Some, perhaps all, of the Apostles were, early on, childish enough to argue about or scheme for their position; surely now we can, like a child at peace on its mother’s breast, leave all that to the Father’s eternal wisdom and Son-giving goodness; and, humbly acknowledging our many sins and failings find ourselves totally content to confidently pray for His merciful forgiveness and hope for His blessing on us in the name of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Father’s eternal, only-begotten and well-beloved Son.

                                                                            

30th Sunday Year A 2017

30^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Exodus 22:20-26; 1 Thessalonians 5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40)

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Dear People of God, we are not quite sure about those questioning Jesus in today’s reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel because St. Mark also gives us this same life-episode and saying from Jesus’ ministry:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

(adding only: ‘and with all your strength’, before continuing with Matthew):

This is the greatest and first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Today’s reading seems to say that ‘one of the Pharisees, a scholar of the Law’ was testing Jesus in the sense of an adversary trying to catch Jesus out or lead Him into error, whereas Saint Mark tells us that Jesus’ interlocutor regarded Him as a much admired teacher.

That doubt about who was/is hearing and interpreting Jesus’ most solemn words is at the very core of Mother Church’s truly sorrowful experience in our Western world today, where great numbers of people formerly proud to call themselves Catholic are now openly agnostic or atheistic; or, where perhaps they were less well-informed as Catholics and being still under-educated socially, have just drifted into whatever sect seems to best offer them immediate religious comfort of whatever sort.

Mother Church’s present grief concerns the reception of her proclamation of Jesus’ supreme and central teaching for mankind, which because it is both sublimely spiritual and of fundamental human importance it is now being targeted by the devil, concerning whom Saint Luke tells us that, after having been defeated in the desert and then dismissed by Jesus:

he departed from Jesus for a time (4:13).

Essentially a liar who delights in lying only marginally less than harming human beings and disrupting all human good and harmony, the devil never likes to show his hand clearly; on the contrary, loving to deceive, he presents himself as an angel of light and quickly teaches any disciples he thus gathers around himself to serve his own purposes and likewise to delight in deceit, especially ‘good-willed’ deceit where they claim to be able to love as good as any Christian without, however, serving the God Christians love to call Father.  Thereby the devil seeks both to frustrate Jesus Whom he whole-heartedly hates, and Who spoke explicitly of a first and greatest commandment ever to be accompanied by a ‘second that is like it’, whilst also harming those human beings who are ‘supposedly’ called to supplant him and his fellow fallen-angels as denizens of heaven and who amount to little more than objects of loathing and contempt in his eyes.

Jesus Himself, out of sublime love of and obedience to His Father in Heaven, came/was sent by His Father to love, serve, and save us.  In other words, Jesus in His earthly being and public ministry totally exemplified the teaching He gave us of there being a first and greatest commandment and a second like it, and His own words about Christian marriage are surely totally relevant and supremely important here:

                        What God has joined together let not man – or devil – separate.

Moses had been unique in Israel with his love for, commitment to, understanding of, the God Who Alone saved and was called Yahweh; and Moses had received from Yahweh a unique Law embodying national love of and obedience to their saving God along with individual respect and service of fellow man in Israel, a Law quite unique in the world of those times.  Moses had personally exemplified and manifested both the Law and the Prophets.  Subsequently further Prophets arose who mainly reminded Israel -- then in the process of lopsidedly betraying their covenant with their God -- about Yahweh’s concern for their respect for and service of their fellows rather than for an ever-greater multitude of sacrificial offerings being made to Himself.  The Law and the Temple on the one hand, and the Prophets on the other had become largely at loggerheads in Israel. 

Jesus, the second and greater Moses came to make all things one in His own unique human being and divine Self: beloved and only-begotten Son of the Father in heaven, and our own flesh-and-blood brother and Saviour.

How ambitious therefore was, and is, the devil’s project to separate, divide, what the very Person of Jesus so gloriously manifested, and what His Holy Spirit so graciously and powerfully supports and furthers, as potentially and vocationally one!   Who are the devil’s instruments?   All those do-gooders of today who remember something of the beauty of Jesus’ once-loved teaching while refusing to follow His example of obedience to His Father, their God. They will practice a love towards men which makes themselves feel good, but not a love of God that calls for their obedience!! 

And how can they do this?  Because their ‘doing good’ makes them feel good independently of God!  They feel no need to give glory and obedience to God once they have embarked on the good ship ‘Good will to all men’.  The ‘do-gooders’ of whom I am now speaking are not fools, they are not insincere or hypocritical, they possibly actually love being able to do some good among men and for men, but from a Catholic and Christian point of view they are foolish in thinking that they can separate what God has joined together, more particularly in their attempt to practice authentic ‘goodness’ without themselves being obedient to the God Who alone is Good.

Such ‘do-gooders’ deny that they themselves are subject to the slavery of sin: their good works, they would say, show their goodness!!   They themselves should know that that is not logical thinking, nor is it factually true in so many cases!

Jim’ll-fix-it … a man’s popular public name in Margaret Thatcher’s time … did very much good indeed, but his self-confidence led to self-indulgence, of a gross kind indeed; but that grossness reflected not so much his common humanity as his own distinct personality, for any and every unredeemed man or woman who rejoices in the goodness they do as being a work of their own goodness, is already a slave of the devil, is already being prepared by him to do whatever work he may want of him  … not necessarily something gross as in the case of Jim’ll-fix-it, but something ultimately very indicative of the deepest human and angelic sin, that of pride: I have no need of God, least of all to do good to fellows of my choice!

Let us look back to Jesus’ own experience (Matthew 26:6–12):

Now when Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to Him with an alabaster jar of costly perfumed oil, and poured it on His head while He was reclining at table.  When the disciples saw this, they were indignant and said, “Why this waste?  It could have been sold for much, and the money given to the poor.”  Since Jesus knew this, He said to them, “Why do you make trouble for the woman? She has done a good thing for Me.  The poor you will always have with you; but you will not always have Me.  In pouring this perfumed oil upon My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial.  

St. John (12: 4-5) gives some more particular and pertinent details of the one whom we may consider as the prototype of ‘do-gooders’:

Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples, and the one who would betray Him, said, ‘Why was this oil not sold for three hundred day’s wages and given to the poor? 

Our Church is much divided today, People of God, and that is due, I believe, largely to the fact that Jesus is not being preached and proclaimed sufficiently today, to the fact that His own standard-setting words are not being followed:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.

The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Mother Church’s proclamation is no longer centred on the greatest and first commandment but rather on social, sexual, relations and difficulties which are being emotionally enhanced and ‘stirred up’ to such an extent that they are disturbing her centre of gravity and ultimate identity which will be, and should now be:

You shall love the Lord your God with all heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 
          

One of the great and burgeoning, so to speak, evils of our day is suicide in both young and old, whether finding themselves alone or accompanied by spouse or friend(s).   In the deepest depths of the human personality there was, is, something missing for such people, and that is the Personal presence of the acknowledged God of Love Who created us originally in His Own likeness and for Himself eternally.  And Jesus is the God-given link, bond between that lonesomeness which is ours of ourselves, and the blessedness of Divinity which is His from ‘the beginning before the world was made’.  Jesus the only-begotten and most beloved Son of the Father, and at the same time our Self-sacrificing Saviour, Lord, and Brother.   Jesus the Link and our Lord, Jesus our supreme Pontiff!

Forgetting Jesus, turning away from, ignoring, Him for whatever human reasons -- for He Himself and His most Holy Spirit are unfailingly available and true -- a man can fill his life with work and, where those works are deliberately chosen as good works, can fill his own personal void with a pseud-divine presence, that of his own goodness or godliness.  That is the best a man-without-God can do.   Others fill their lives with absorbing activities or distracting pleasures, which can -- because of their latent evil content -- very soon wear thin, especially in the young who, because they should, in their youth, normally be experiencing relatively wonderful ideals or aspirations, instead find themselves victims of disillusionment.   There are still others, and these are most potent examples of what I am speaking about, those lovers who marry and  remain lovers throughout their much-blessed lives, but, in the end, or rather at their mutually chosen time, commit suicide together, witnessing thereby to the fact that man and woman though filled with the best that mere humanity can afford them still experience a personal void that can and will destroy them when they reject, refuse, and ignore the Personal presence of God in their hearts and lives.

Dear People of God, we are weak and ignorant human beings who can be and once were deceived by the devil showing himself as an angel of light; that is why Jesus speaks to us today in and through His Church using words that are of crystal clarity:

You shall love the Lord your God with all heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.

The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

           

           

29th Sunday Year A 2017

Sermon 49a: 29^th. Sunday (A)

(Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1^st. Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21)

In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah we learned that God is indeed Lord and Ruler of all, even of certain supremely important happenings 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.

And St. Paul in our second reading took up that appreciation of God’s divine 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.

How Mother Church today needs such ‘persons’ whose faith is for them a fount of holy power and assured commitment to Jesus Who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever!

A disturbing aspect of modern Church life, however, is the growing tendency to find the Jesus of yesterday, today, and forever, too unpopular to turn to, look to, for guidance, to love with zeal, and to proclaim fearlessly.  Rather many figures in Mother Church today look to society around, to observe what is happening there, especially in matters of popular sexual morality and social responsibility, and to then try to make the Jesus we know -- the traditional Jesus of countless martyrs and saints, the Jesus proclaimed and fought for by St. Paul and St. John in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction , the Jesus of the Gospels -- and then, I say, try to make that Jesus somehow fit in seamlessly with society’s popular practices and ‘beliefs’! 

The traditional analogy of the development of doctrine with human growth is much used now to say -- as has always been the case -- that change is necessary for life; but today’s advocates do not advert to the fact that nowhere in the course of human growth does the person become unrecognizable as, or contradictory to, what he or she was before.  Nowhere 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 modern ‘popular “Catholic” sensitivities’, to allow those whose public words or open life-style contradict the Gospel yet feel at home in Mother Church?

In modern Western society, effeminacy is widespread; not simply because women are becoming more preponderant and powerful in our society, more appreciated in the life of Mother Church (where, however, they have always been not merely popularly, but most devoutly recognised, admired, and beloved as religious), nor, indeed, simply because some are showing themselves to be generally much more career-conscious, self-promoting, and confrontational in men’s regard, with mordent criticism of masculine attitudes as being violent, insensitive, unloving, lacking in communication skills etc.  But it is also a fact that, in conjunction with those feminist tendencies in individuals and society, too many men are, alas, imitating Adam by allowing themselves to be over-influenced, at times even intimidated, by humanistic and overly-emotional individuals, and by public appreciations based, not on the Christian trilogy of Faith, Hope, and Charity, but on the (French) revolutionary and iconoclastic ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity.

‘Freedom’: who can speak better of that than St. Paul who says:

Brothers and sisters: For freedom Christ set us free; so, stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.  (Galatians 5:1)

A yoke defined, indeed, definitively for us who are Catholics and Christians by Jesus when He said:

Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34),

a yoke which is totally ignored by modern humanists who know no sin, with the result that its crushing weight bears down upon innumerable slaves delighting in and/or subject to the power and pleasure of drugs and sex, industries that disfigure and disgrace our society and our world today!

‘Equality’ … what a word, just right for inciting nit-picking and fostering discord and dissension!!   What words have we Christians been taught and received?  Men and women are ‘equal’ indeed in divine dignity as children of God; ‘complimentary’, however, in personal relationships and shared human endeavours for the coming of God’s kingdom:

Now the body is not a single part, but many. If a foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. Or if an ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as He intended. (1 Corinthians 12:14–18)

‘Fraternity’ … the Romans of old, at least those in the upper echelons, prided themselves on their fraternity/friendship!  If I might, I will quote Peter Brown in his book, ‘Through the Eye of a Needle’ (p. 101):  Whatever their beliefs, Symmachus wished to treat members of his (senatorial) class as peers held together by the old fashioned “religion of friendship.”

And what, originally all-conquering, Christian word have we, in this respect, fecklessly lost by repeatedly allowing our opponents to degrade our words and determine our use of them?   ‘Charity’, divine love, able to inspire and elevate our human relationships and endeavours above all merely human understandings of ‘love’ which, so very frequently and manifestly, show themselves open for, and prone to accommodate, all sorts of disgraceful distortions and open contradictions. 

And so, although the Catholic understanding of Christian marriage rightly emphasizes  that  man and woman marry for both the divine blessing and social good of giving birth to children as also for their own personal and mutual benefit, nevertheless, in this modern social context, Christian family life is suffering because contention and challenge are eroding the unity and thus ruining the example of the spouses; with the result that, for example, children are now being seriously damaged due to a lack of authentic discipline and an absence of true love: they are even being thought able (though not yet sixteen!) to go to court in order to change their native sexuality against their parents wishes!

A Christian husband should teach his children how to love their mother by his own example, and likewise, a mother should insist that her children follow her example and learn to respect and obey their father.  Thus, the Christian husband and father should use his accepted authority not as a despot to get absolute obedience for himself from his children, but to insist on and exemplify love and honour for his wife; while the Christian wife and mother should use her unique hold on the family’s heartstrings, not to get ever more love for herself from her children -- as some neurotic might -- but to lead and guide them in showing respect and obedience for their father, her husband.

It used to be jokingly (?) said that ‘a lady is a woman who makes it easy for a man to be a gentleman’; and I personally grew up with a deep awareness of and admiration for my ‘complementary’ mother, whom I never saw as undermining my father, but rather as helping him to be and become a man, by supporting him as her man-of-the-house and my father.   As for my father he -- by his own personal discipline -- in return helped my mother become more capable of being a truly loving mother, wife, and person by controlling her own emotional exaggerations and excesses.   This mutual helping and oneness – this complementarity -- of the spouses is, moreover, truly sacred, being meant to exalt and support both of them in their dealings with their children: no child should ever be allowed to threaten or break that unity of father and mother; no child should ever be used in selfish confrontational attitudes by either of their parents.

The present-day fragility of family life is reflected in society as a whole, where criminality is rampant because – among other factors – Christians, having too often supinely surrendered words and their meanings over many years, have thereby allowed emotive enthusiasts to decry right punishment as vengeance, and portray justice as inhuman, branding both punishment and justice therefore, as unchristian words and unacceptable social practices. 

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 -- needs 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 remarkably 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, servants and disciples 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.