Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The second part of the Book of Isaiah provides the first reading for Mass this weekend. The context was a very bad time for God’s people. The two Hebrew kingdoms no longer existed, both having been victims of a military onslaught from strong neighboring empires.
Invasions swept away the structures of the two Hebrew kingdoms. Their dynasties were eradicated. They lost their independence. Many people died. Survivors were at the mercy of the invaders.
Victorious invaders over the southern kingdom of Judah took many of the survivors to Babylon, the capital of the Babylonian empire. There the Hebrews were kept. They weren’t not exactly hostages, but their lives were miserable.
Times eventually changed, however. The Babylonians were conquered by their neighbor, the powerful Persian empire.
Cyrus, the Persian king, had no interest in holding the exiles from the former Hebrew kingdom and allowed them to return home. For them, it was a day of unequalled joy.
A most novel turn of phrase was the prophet’s depiction of King Cyrus as an instrument of God. It was a novelty since Cyrus was a pagan. He was not in any sense a son of Abraham. He had no knowledge of, or regard for, the One God of Israel. His ancestors had never followed Moses across the Sinai Peninsula in the Exodus.
Yet, God used Cyrus to accomplish his divine will. God was ultimately responsible for the survival and return to peace and security of the children of Abraham.
The second reading is from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians. Thessalonica was a northern Greek port city on the Aegean Sea, one of the few New Testament cities still an important center, the modern Greek city of Saloniki.
Paul reassured, encouraged and strengthened the Christians in Thessalonica, who were trying to exist amid a hostile pagan culture. He also forcefully asserted his own credentials, insisting that he was a most devout believer in the message of the Lord Jesus, and indeed an Apostle, specially chosen by Christ. His authority came from the Lord.
St. Matthew’s Gospel provides the last reading. It is one of the best-known passages in the New Testament.
The reading does not teach that two reservoirs of authority exist on Earth, equal but distinct, removed from each other, one the state, the other God.
Detractors thought that they could trick Jesus. If the Lord spoke against paying taxes, Roman law would be violated, and the Romans were unforgiving. If Jesus approved paying taxes, then he would appear to validate the hated Roman conquest and occupation.
Jesus avoided both traps, bluntly stating that God’s law is supreme. The emperor’s image on the coin was important. So, give it back to him. It only is metal, an earthly invention.
Reflection
As elections approach, politics is in the air. Sadly, this magnificent lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, putting God first, often is distorted in interpretations of the separation of Church and state in the American constitutional context.
The Bill of Rights responded to the widespread practice of the late 18th century of the state preferring, supporting and even mandating one denomination over another—Anglicanism in England, Orthodoxy in Russia, Lutheranism in Scandinavia, Catholicism in France and Spain.
Constitutionally, in America, individual personal conviction was made supreme in the Bill of Rights and remains so, expressly including religious convictions. Essentially, this approach glorifies the individual person, a keystone of Catholic morality.
Government legitimately functions, but every citizen can and should bring religious convictions into judgments about government practices.
Christians who oppose immoral laws or applaud the moral ones are fully within their constitutional rights by studying issues carefully, by viewing current questions, such as immigration, public programs and policies, through the eyes of the Gospel, by respecting others and by attempting to shape the ordering of society according to Christian values. †