Becoming a Citizen in His Spirit
Is
45:1,
4-6; 1 Thes 1:1-5; Mt 22:15-21 (29 / A)
"He raises the poor from the dust and
lifts the needy from the ash heap".
They asked Jesus whether it was
lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. If Jesus said “Yes”, he would ruin his standing
with the Jewish people, who despised foreign taxation and viewed it as
submission to a pagan power. If Jesus said “No”, he would be reported to the
Romans immediately for sedition and treason. A Christian is a citizen of the
earthly country in which one lives. From the state, we receive physical safety,
order, infrastructure, and public services. Supporting those systems through
civic responsibility is a legitimate duty. Jesus shows that earthly and
heavenly loyalty need not inherently conflict, provided civil authority stays
within its proper bounds.
Today’s Gospel reading has, at
times, been understood to mean that the Church should not “interfere” in
political life but should focus only on its salvific mission and matters of
faith. However, this interpretation is totally false. Dealing with God’s
matters does not mean to mind only the worship of the Church, but to be also
concerned about all people –God’s children– and about man’s justice. Pretending
the Church does not move from the sacristy, while being deaf, blind, and mute
before the moral and human problems and abuses of our time, amounts to stealing
from God what belongs to God. Benedict XVI said, “The tolerance that admits God
as it were as a private opinion but refuses him the public domain... is not
tolerance but hypocrisy”.
St. Hilary of Poitiers says, “The
coin of Caesar is made of gold, on which his image is engraved; the coin of God
is man, in whom the image of God is depicted. Therefore, give your riches to
Caesar and keep the conscience of your innocence for God.” Catechism of the
Catholic Church instructs us, “The citizen is obliged in conscience not to
follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the
demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the
teachings of the Gospel” (2242).
But there remains the warning of
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, that “no one can serve two masters; one
cannot be the slave of both God and wealth” (Mt 6:24). Wealth in early OT times
was seen as created by God, and bestowed on patriarchs, kings and leaders who
had roles of special responsibility. Later on, wealth ceased to be regarded as
a gift from God. “Woe to those who join house to house and field to field,
until everywhere belongs to them,” Isaiah warned (Is 5:8), and Jesus himself
said, “Alas for you who are rich; you are having your life of ease now” (Lk
6:24). The world and all its resources were created by God for the benefit of
all human beings without exception, and this must usually obtain alongside the
right to private property, whether inherited or acquired by personal
enterprise. And it is the task of government to seek balance between policies
that will help the common good of all the citizens. And taxation is still one
of the most common means of achieving this.
“He has scattered
the proud in the conceit of their hearts…”
