29th. Sunday (A)
(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 God is indeed Lord and Ruler of All, even secret
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, the same yesterday, today, and for ever!
However, in modern Western society,
effeminacy is widespread; not because women are becoming numerically
preponderant in our society, nor, indeed, simply because some are showing
themselves to be both self-promoting and confrontational in men’s regard, with
repeated and voluble criticism of masculine attitudes as being violent,
insensitive, unloving, lacking in communication skills, not to mention other
opined faults. But it is also a fact
that, in conjunction with such 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 such widespread 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:
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 by Jesus for us
Catholics and Christians:
Jesus answered
them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin
(John 8:34),
but totally ignored by modern
humanists, with the result that a crushing yoke weighs down upon innumerable
slaves subject to the drugs and sex industries that disfigure and disgrace our
society and our world today!
‘Equal’ … what a word, just right
for inciting nit-picking and fostering discord and dissension!! What words have we Christians been taught
and received? ‘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’! If I might, I will quote Peter Brown in his
recent 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 determine the meanings of words and our use of them? ‘Charity’, divine charity, able to inspire and
elevate our human relationships and endeavours over and above all merely human
understandings of goodness and love which otherwise so frequently and manifestly
show themselves able and prone to accommodate all sorts of infamous distortions
and open contradictions.
And so, although the Catholic
understanding of Christian marriage rightly emphasizes that man and woman marry for both the divine
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
ruining the example of the spouses; with the result, for example, that children
are now being seriously damaged due to a lack of authentic discipline and an
absence of true love. 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 secret and deep awareness of, and admiration for, my
‘complementary’ mother, because I never saw her undermining my father, but
rather helping him to be and become a man, by supporting him as her man
of the house and my father. This mutual helping and oneness of the
spouses is, moreover, truly sacred,
being meant to exalt and support both of them in all their dealings with their
children: no child should be allowed to threaten or break that unity of father
and mother; no child should 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,
for example, to decry punishment as vengeance, and portray justice as inhuman,
and both, 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 religious
devotion. There we are clearly shown the
Pharisees and the Herodians trying 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 to get Jesus in
trouble. If Jesus 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 deemed it necessary to seek Him 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."
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 to contemplate alone before God.
But now, 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.
A man of integrity! We, as disciples of Jesus, are called to lead
good lives, that is, lives of integrity before God, not conformity with the
prevailing modern standards and judgements.
We have to try to live up to the role set before us in the Scriptures and
called for in the teaching of Mother Church.
However, knowing well that our sins are many and our weaknesses manifest
to the eyes of God, we try to assimilate this awareness into our own
self-consciousness, and so, true Christian integrity should always be
accompanied by a corresponding degree of humility. However, the danger is that we can begin to
weary of the gradual grind of humility under the training of the God to Whom our
sins and weaknesses are so perfectly well-known, and begin to slide into an easy
acceptance of the accolades of men who are willing to give immediate rewards for
our 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 and able 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: the 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.
Pius the 12th. is often
blamed today for not speaking out against the Nazis on behalf of the Jews. I do not know the details, but I do know that
life under Nazi domination was not a time or situation for parading blunt truth,
personal pride, and public recklessness.
He was in a sort of hostage situation: millions of his Catholic people
lived under the Nazis who were men of no conscience. The Church, with her Lord, must needs be
independent of the State, but she cannot behave as if the State does not exist;
and sometimes -- as we saw in our OT reading -- a pagan state might be used by
God for His own good purposes. The
Church may not seek to overthrow the State, but she can -- and does have to --
seek to influence the practices of the state through her proclamation of
Christian truth. At times, situations
can arise which resemble the situation of Jesus in our Gospel passage today, and
who can blame a man – even one as great as Pope Pius XII -- or Church
authorities, if they are found not to have had the divine wisdom of Jesus? Even St. Paul, who proclaimed all men equal
before God, did not challenge the State of that time to free all slaves: he
chose to teach that true Christians neither could before God nor ever should in
fact abuse their slaves in their persons or in their labours, and in that way he
gently yet incontrovertibly prepared the way for their future total
freedom.
People of God, only the holy power
of the 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 truth in the face of the society in which we find
ourselves. 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. While thus endeavouring to practice true
personal integrity before God, we should also never forget that we are,
individually, members of His People, of His family, and therefore we can never
think of ourselves as independent of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our own personal integrity and independence
have to be able to embrace all those for whom Christ died; for just as true
glory can only be given to God the Father with, in, and through the whole Body
of Christ, Head and members; so also true, personal, praise and profit can only
come to us as a sharing in the well-being of the whole Body of all who, in
accordance with the Father's will and working of the Holy Spirit, are being led
to share in the fullness of salvation to be found in Jesus.
