Giving to God What is God’s, 9th Tuesday (I), June 6, 2017

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Norbert
June 6, 2017
Tob 2:9-14, Ps 112, Mk 12:13-17

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In the Gospel, two archenemies, the strict Pharisees and the lax Herodians conspire to try to trap Jesus in his speech so that they could use it to turn the crowds and the Romans against him. They asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. It was not fundamentally a question of “taxation without representation” or things of the sort, but a question of potential idolatry. Because the Jews need to pay taxes with Roman currency, because Roman coins had the image of the emperor on it and because at this point in Roman practice people had given Caesar the title of Augustus, meaning he was divine, to pay taxes in Roman coins was considered like making sacrifices to pagan gods. If Jesus said, “Yes, it’s lawful,” the Pharisees could accuse him of blasphemy and idolatry and turn the Jewish faithful against him. If he said, “No, it’s not licit,” the Herodians could turn him into the Romans as someone trying to incite a tax revolt. But Jesus wasn’t getting to get caught in their trap. He asked for a coin that was used to provide the census tax and they provided him one, showing precisely that they carried the money and used it for ordinary business affairs, and hence that they were duplicitous in asking the question since they didn’t really consider using coins for such a purpose idolatrous. Then Jesus gave a response that is far more important than an issue of taxes. After querying whose image was on the coin, he said, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were already participating in Caesar’s system and could give him money but not worship — Jesus implied — because worship belongs to God. Jesus was implicitly answering their deeper question of idolatry, splitting “Caesar” from “Augustus” or “Divus,” but also at the same time addressing the issue of the contribution of the upkeep to the civic good.
• Today we will focus on giving to God what belongs to God. We are made in God’s image and hence we are to give to God the things that are God’s: we’re to give him the time he gives us, the talents he gives us, the money he gives us, indeed the life and love he gives us. We’re to give not just something, but what’s worthy, which is all our mind, heart, soul and strength. We also are called to give others to God because they are made in his image as well: to give our loved ones to him in consecration at birth and baptism, to give our loved ones to him in suffering and death, to give our fellow family members and spiritual siblings to him when they’re transferred or have to move, in short, to entrust to him everything and everyone he has made.
• Tobit, for all of his goodness, struggled to make this total. We saw yesterday that he had made sacrifices in Jerusalem when everyone was sacrificing in pagan temples. He didn’t eat forbidden foods when everyone else was doing so. He buried the dead even at the risk of his life. When he lost his eyesight by a freak means, as we see today, rather than cursing God,he thanked him, as we see in the prayer he made immediately afterward, “You are righteous, O Lord, and all your deeds are just; All your ways are mercy and truth.” We see that the loss of sight led to two great gifts. The first was that he couldn’t go personally, but needed to send his Son, Tobias, to collect a huge sum of money he had left in Media where he used to work, and it was there that Tobias would meet his wife. And second, he would be healed after four years in a true miracle of God’s presence. Then he would say: “Blessed be God, and praised be his great name, and blessed be all his holy angels. May his holy name be praised throughout all the ages, because it was he who scourged me, and it is he who has had mercy on me. Behold, I now see my son Tobiah!” But we see in the first reading that Tobit was very human insofar as he sought to choose the way he would exercise charity toward God and neighbor. He wasn’t yet giving to God the gift of his wife. When she told him she had received a bonus of a goat for work, he refused to believe her, and she reminded him of the limits he was imposing on his charity while distressed. This is a big point in the spiritual life. It’s often easy to give God huge sacrifices when we want to, but there are other parts he sometimes asks of us that we hesitate to give.  Often we are willing to do all types of sacrifices for God and for strangers and can sometimes neglect those neighbors literally closest to us among our family members. Tobit, even in his distrust for his wife, was zealous for the Lord’s commandments and so great was his desire not to profit from stolen goods; but his zeal for God didn’t extend to trusting his wife and in the generosity of others who gave more because of his situation. When Anna pointed out that his behavior wasn’t consistent with the character and virtues he was known for, she was calling him, essentially, to remember in whose image he was made and she was made and to start acting accordingly.
• Today on the feast of St. Norbert, we can recall that early in life he was mostly concerned with money and was a high ranking financial officer. He sought to become a cleric fundamentally for the economic benefits that would come from benefices. But he had a deep conversion post ordination and then began to recognize God’s just place, that he was the giver of everything and that we need to give back. And he sought to give to God the things that are God’s and help others through the Norbertines he founded to do the same. As we come to Mass today on his feast day, we ask God for the grace to learn from him, from Tobit and his wife, how to give God thanks for all of his blessings, because even when we seem to be missing a blessing — for Tobit, his sight — God is in fact planning to give us every greater blessings still. On this day on which we remember in whose image we’ve been made and thank him for all his generosity in giving himself for us, we respond by trying to conform our whole life according to the image of that generosity, giving our body, blood, sweat, tears, heart, mind, soul and strength to the One who gave everything to save us.

The readings for today’s Mass were: