E hiki mai kou aupuni
Here is Bishop Castori’s reflection on the readings from the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
As I flew out of Washington, D.C., earlier this week (where I attended the inauguration of Georgetown University’s new President Eduardo Penalver) and caught an aerial view of the nation’s monuments strung like pearls along the Potomac River, I could not help but make the connection between the monuments’ implicit call to civic responsibility and the treatment of “church and state” in the Scriptures for this Sunday, the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
On first hearing, it is odd to hear in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah the Lord saying to Cyrus, king of Persia, “I have called you by name.” After all, as we know from the story of Queen Esther, Persia could be quite hostile to the people of Israel.
Yet, in this instance, King Cyrus had shown kindness to the Jews, enabling them to rebuild the Temple after its destruction by the Babylonians. Therefore the Lord called this pagan king “by name,” bestowing favor on him and encouraging the people of Israel to regard him favorably as well.
From this it is clear that, although we tend to view as a modern question the notion of “church and state” (the question of how a community of faith relates to the larger, civic society in which the faithful live), it actually is as old as the inspiration and writing of the Bible itself.
For centuries, the Jews had to somehow make their way as a religious and ethnic community in a larger “state,” i.e. in a foreign empire that did not follow, or often even have respect for, the laws of Moses that had formed them as a people.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus was confronted with effectively this same question of “church and state.” The Herodians who asked of Jesus, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” were, of course, partisans of King Herod, who collaborated with the Roman overlords to subjugate and exploit the people of Israel.
For many Jews in Jesus’ time, the tax levied on them by Caesar and his local agents presented a moral dilemma. On the one hand, the coin used to pay the census tax bore on it an image and caption identifying the Roman emperor as divine, and thus its handling and use could be considered a form of idolatry. On the other hand, if the Jews refused to pay the tax, they would lose the permission that the Romans granted them to perform the crucial commandment of worshipping and sacrificing to God in the Temple.
Presented with a choice between these two options — the possibility of committing the sin of idolatry and that of the loss of the Temple — how could they remain faithful to the “city of God” while dwelling in the “city of man”?
Jesus’ response to the Herodians, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” is often praised for its cleverness, that is, for its avoidance of a trap, but this interpretation misses the point, for our Lord was being more than clever here.
First, by stating, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Jesus was acknowledging the fact that the people lived in a civil, largely pagan, society that was far from the ideal of the Kingdom of God. He understood the dilemma in which they found themselves. But more importantly, without explicitly settling the question of taxation posed to him, Jesus provided the overarching Gospel principle by which the people were to be guided: “Render unto God what is God’s” — in effect, put God first, since all ultimately belongs to God.
Jesus was reminding the people not to lose sight of this overarching principle — the heart of the commandments — in discerning how to remain faithful in the challenging context in which they found themselves.
As in the time of Jesus, civil society in our time is far from ideal. A faithful disciple of Jesus today can find it a challenge to know how to exercise his or her civic responsibility in a way that duly respects the inner consistency of Catholic ethical teaching, that is, the imperatives of protecting the dignity of human life, providing for the poor and vulnerable, safeguarding religious liberty, promoting the common good, respecting the rights of the family, supporting responsible stewardship of creation, promoting peace and justice, encouraging solidarity and charity, and fostering faith in public life.
In fact, given the nation’s current political climate, it would be surprising if we did not struggle in some way to know how to be faithful to the “city of God” while dwelling in the “city of man.”
Yet Jesus’ thoughtful response to the Herodians in today’s Gospel reminds us that we nonetheless are called to make our way in this world as men and women of faith. What is not consistent with our faith is to throw up our hands and walk away when faced with the challenge that living in a more secular context presents.
For, in truth, if we are to help build the Kingdom of God, we must participate in shaping the larger society in which we live. In the words of His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV: “We cannot remain as unengaged spectators; rather, we must listen with our hearts, allow ourselves to be challenged, and become involved.”
As faithful sons and daughters of the Church, and thus guided by the two great Commandments that Jesus gave us — “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” — let us never cease discerning how to be true to the Gospel, how to make our lives “render unto God what is God’s.”
Devotedly in Christ,
Bishop Michael