29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A October 22, 2023 Fr. Alexander
Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” And what is that, exactly? What do we owe to God? Everything. The demands of our religion aren’t arbitrary. They are concrete expressions of the fact that we owe God everything. Authentic religion is the effort to make that repayment.
Last week, I focused particularly on the obligation to attend Sunday Mass. Repaying to God what we owe to God means being willing to sacrifice time, money, and our own pride in order to make it to Mass every week. Sickness, physical inability to get to Mass, providing essential care to others… things like that are legitimate reasons to miss. But the game, the harvest, the shopping, the cooking and cleaning, the extra sleep, the time with loved ones, the politics… those and more can wait. We do owe some of our time and energy to those kinds of thing, but we owe God first. Even when we can’t make it to Mass or can’t receive communion, we still owe him our worship.
Now, I’m sure some of you cheer internally when I get all stern about things like Mass attendance and repentance. It often excites me to hear someone speak forcefully about doing the right thing and I often want to share those moments with people I think need to hear it. I imagine some of you were eager to “elbow jab” a few people in your life who you think need to listen to what I said. I appreciate that and maybe you’re right. Maybe a well-placed guilt trip or a tough chat over coffee is exactly what that person in your life needs in order to spur them to come back to Church. That really works sometimes. Probably more often than we’re willing to try.
Yet, we need to take stock of ourselves here, our own motives. Do we really want what is best for that person in our life? Or is it spiritual pride, a hidden judgmentalism, the self-satisfaction of convincing so-and-so to do what you’re already doing. After all, the context for this teaching is that some Pharisees – good church-going folks – are acting like they want Jesus to teach them some hard truths, to back them up on what people are supposed to do. “Do we pay the census tax or not?” Tell em, Jesus, tell em how they’re doing the wrong thing. Tell them that I’m right and that they should be more like me.”
Of course, they’re not really looking for the answer. They’re just trying to trap Jesus with a loaded question. And he knows it. He calls them out on their hypocrisy. The pharisees probably do think it is a sin to pay the census tax, but they pay it anyway. they compromise their beliefs when the pressure is on like just about everyone else. Hoping Jesus’ integrity will get him in trouble, they set him up with two terrible options: either reject the tax and get arrested or approve the tax and show himself to be just another hypocrite.
And yet, Jesus does answer the question. Because he has integrity, because he genuinely does want people to know and live the truth, he nonetheless takes this opportunity to teach us a difficult truth. We do in fact owe something to our government while owing everything to God. Repaying what we owe to Caesar basically means that Catholics should pay taxes, obey laws, and generally try to be good citizens so long as this does not cause them to sin directly. As the 1st reading shows, God does indeed use pagan governments and sinful leaders to accomplish his plan. For all the evil they did, the Roman Empire really was part of God’s plan. He used the peace, the infrastructure, and even parts of the culture of ancient Rome to help spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But back to the point about owing God everything. We should go to Mass every Sunday, even when it costs us time, money, and convenience. We should want other Catholics to act accordingly. But, this is no excuse for hypocrisy and spiritual pride. If we rub this truth in the face of other Catholics for our own ego rather than their benefit, we are depriving God of something else that we owe him: evangelization.
Maybe that’s a bit counterintuitive; that pressuring people to go to Mass might be a violation of our call to evangelize, but it really can be. We do owe God our efforts to evangelize. It’s not extra, it is part of how we repay to God what we owe him. But, authentic evangelization must not be rooted in pride, in the desire to be right. Loving the truth and loving being right are not the same thing. Loving your neighbor and controlling your neighbor are not the same thing. Evangelization and manipulation are not the same thing. And one of the best ways to tell them apart is to take stock of our own pride.
As I said, guilt-trips, shared articles or videos, and tough conversations really can be part of genuine evangelization. Still, we must prune away our pride and cultivate our love. I preached forcefully about Mass attendance to people already at Mass, hoping to strengthen their resolve to keep coming back. I shared it online, hoping that it would reach people who already know they should be at Mass, but needed a push. I hope some of you were genuinely inspired to share it with people in that situation and that it helped.
At the same time, however, I have no illusions that it will have much effect on non-Catholics or on those Catholics who are past a certain point. Everyone needs to be evangelized, but large swaths of the population, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, need something other than being guilt-tripped for missing Sunday Mass. They aren’t ready for that yet. They first need to encounter or rencounter the gospel. St. Paul’s letter tells us that the “gospel did not come in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”
Never even trying to evangelize our neighbors is definitely a failure. On the other extreme, if we’re acting out of spiritual pride, if we’re more interested in being right than in serving the truth, if we’re more invested in controlling others than in loving them, then, yes, that also could contradict authentic evangelization.
So, what do we do? We learn to love our neighbors well. I’ll pick up on this next week, but for now start with the three things Paul lists as helping the Gospel. Power, the Holy Spirit, and Conviction. Seek the power of God through more intense and more frequent prayer. Pray for conversions, healings, and courage and wisdom in evangelizing.
Seek out the Holy Spirit. Ask him to root out your spiritual pride, hypocrisy, and laziness. Ask him to soften the hearts of the unevangelized. Listen to Him in scripture and silence.
Finally, conviction. Be convicted of your own faith! Take seriously your own call to turn from sin, go to Mass, and evangelize others. You don’t have to be perfect, just take the next step in conforming your life to what you claim to believe, improving your faith life in some small, but concrete way. And do not be afraid. You already belong to God, stamped with his image in a way much more permanent than the face of an emperor on a coin. He will give you all you need and more to let that image shine through if only you’ll put yourself back in his hands.