God’s Tax Rate, 9th Tuesday (II), June 5, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
June 5, 2018
2 Pet 3:12-15.17-18, Ps 90, Mk 12:13-17

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, taken from Jesus’ time in the Temple teaching after Palm Sunday, two groups that were archenemies conspired to try to trap Jesus. Both the Herodians and the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus out of the way, because both felt threatened by him. They decided to ask him a question about which they themselves were constantly in disagreement — whether it was lawful to pay taxes to or support in any way the Roman empire. The Herodians were laxist sycophants, and, regardless of how they personally felt about a foreign power’s ruling over them, decided that if you couldn’t beat the Romans, you should join them. Herod and his partisans cooperated with the Romans in almost everything, including taxes. The Pharisees, like most of the Jewish people, deeply resented being dominated by a pagan power, and found utterly repulsive the thought of giving a tribute to a foreign ruler who fancied himself a god. To use his currency or to give him anything was, for them, tantamount to idolatry. Despite their disagreement, both groups agreed that their long-standing disagreement seemed to be a perfect catch-22 by which to nail the carpenter from Nazareth.
• So they approached Jesus and manifested their mendacity and hypocrisy by a barrage of empty flattery that we Christians know was nevertheless true: “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man, teach the way of God with accordance to the truth, show deference to no one, and don’t play favorites.” Then came the thorny, highly relevant, problematic, controversial, and indeed malicious question: “Is it lawful to the census tax to Caesar or not?” It was the perfect query, they thought, because no matter how Jesus answered it, they had him. If he failed to respond, he would lose authority by ducking one of the most relevant political questions of the day. If he said “yes,” he would risk losing the affection of the masses, who hated the Romans, hated the emperor, and particularly hated being forced to give him any recognition at all. Beyond that, because the coin bore the image of Caesar who had declared himself a god, many Jews thought that to use it for any purpose, including paying taxes, was to give that god homage, an idolatry that they couldn’t permit. If Jesus said “no,” however, then they could turn him over to Pontius Pilate for sedition and inciting lawlessness among the people. But Jesus would not be trapped, and would bring good out of their evil. In answer to their hypocrisy, he pointed the path to true human integrity. In response to their deceitfulness, Jesus gave us a truth on which to structure our lives, one that is as relevant today as it ever was.
• After he had asked to see the denarius stamped with the Emperor’s profile used for the tax and they had brought him one (showing that all of them used the money when it served their purposes!), he calmly queried, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When they responded, “Caesar’s,” he gave them and us the principle that extends far beyond than the glory days of Rome. “Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Most of Jesus’ original listeners thought that you couldn’t serve two leaders, both God and Caesar; either you gave to God, they thought, or gave to Caesar. Jesus said it was not necessarily “either… or” but could be and should be “both… and.” To pay taxes or to participate in the social order was not de facto an act of idolatry. In fact, Jesus said, there are imperatives in the social order just as there are imperatives in our relationship to God. The two in principle are not only not in conflict but in the best scenario should go together, because as we heard two weeks ago, one of our responsibilities toward God is to love our neighbor, and one of the greatest services to our neighbor is the service of the truth that flows from faith in God.
• Today, we come to Mass not to entrap Jesus in his speech, but to learn from him the truth that will set us free. We come to ask him to go more deeply into the question about the allegiance we owe to the social order — to our society, our nation, our communities, our city — and the allegiance we owe to him. Today he wants us not mainly to look our currency, but look in the mirror, and ask, “Whose image is this?” The human being, every person, you and I, carry within not just the image of our parents and grandparents, but another far more profound reflection and identity, that of God, and therefore it is to him that of us owes our existence. As one ancient author wrote, “The image of God is not impressed on gold, but on the human race. Caesar’s coin is gold, God’s coin is humanity,” and St. Augustine mentioned, “As tribute money is rendered to [Caesar], so should the soul be rendered to God, illumined and stamped with the light of his countenance.” We’re called to give to God the things that are God’s. All that we are, all that we have, all our time, our talents, our money, our resources, our health comes from God, are part of our being in his image, and we’re called by him in justice, in wisdom and in love, as good stewards, to give back to God with interest the things that are his. The greatest confusion of our age is not political, or gender-based or racial. It’s when we forget our identity, when we fail to remember that we’re chips off the divine Block, that we’ve been formed like God to become like him by participating in his life. Last October, when this Gospel was read on the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time , Pope Francis spoke in his Angelus meditation about what Jesus’ words mean for us and for Christians of every age. “The reference to Caesar’s image engraved on the coin,” Pope Francis told those assembled in St. Peter’s Square, “says that it is right that they feel fully — with rights and duties — citizens of the State; but symbolically it makes them think about the other image that is imprinted on every man and woman: the image of God. …  From the question posed to him by the Pharisees, Jesus draws a more radical and vital question for each of us, a question we can ask ourselves: to whom do I belong? To family, to the city, to friends, to work, to politics, to the State? Yes, of course. But first and foremost — Jesus reminds us — you belong to God. This is the fundamental belonging. It is He who has given you all that you are and have. And therefore, day by day, we can and must live our life in recognition of this fundamental belonging and in heartfelt gratitude toward our Father, who creates each one of us individually, unrepeatably, but always according to the image of his beloved Son, Jesus. It is a wondrous mystery.”
• How much do we actually give to God?  The context of taxes in today’s Gospel is helpful. Most of us hate paying taxes and do everything we can to pay less — at different levels, we save receipts, we take deductions, we pay accountants to find loopholes, we vote for politicians who promise lower rates, we move savings to off-shore havens, and those who run corporations often lobby legislators for loopholes. Sometimes we try similar strategies with God, whom we don’t want to “tax” the time, money, talents, he’s given us, because we prefer to be owners rather than stewards. Many of us Christians do what we can to get out of our spiritual commitments. We ask how far can we go without sinning. We do the minimum in terms of our prayers. We donate something but do not make a real sacrifice. Some Catholics even shop for Churches or Masses or confessors that are less demanding on our time. Today Jesus is calling us to a different way of living. He says to us, “Give to God the things that are God’s.” The gift that Jesus is asking of us is ourselves, and our supreme task in life is to make our lives fit to offer to him and with him for others. We’re all in a 100 percent tax bracket, called to give everything… with love! It brings us back to the famous Lenten Hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, which finishes, “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small: love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”
• The Second Letter of St. Peter, which the Church gives us liturgically only two days in two years (yesterday we had the beginning and today we have the conclusion), precisely is meant to form us to be able to give to God what he deserves in the midst of a gnostic antinomianism that pretends as if God indulgently allows us to do whatever we want regardless of his commandments and the intrinsic demands of truth and genuine love. Yesterday the Letter presented an eight step staircase of spiritual growth from faith to agape. Today the Letter summarizes and emphasizes two points I’d like to stress within the context of the Gospel. The first is that God gives us everything we need to pay the spiritual taxes that he deserves. “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” Grace is our participation, as creatures, in God’s own life. God gives us his life. Knowledge of Jesus is not just knowing about him, but a friendship, indeed a spiritual espousal. He marries us and we pay the taxes fundamentally as a couple. He has given 100 for us and we join him in that total self-offering. The second insight we learn from the Second Letter of St. Peter about how to give of ourselves to God is through “wait[ing] for and hasten[ing] the coming of the day of God.” Those seem contradictory, telling us to slow down and speed up at the same time. But first we wait on the Lord’s grace, receiving everything as a gift, conscious that the “patience of our Lord” is part of our “salvation.” We slow down in order to let him act. But then, at the same time, we hasten in a several different ways. First, through our prayer, by praying “Thy kingdom come!” and meaning it. Second, through our preaching, because, as Jesus said in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.” Third, through penance, making straight the paths of the Lord. Fourth, through obedience, as we enter into his kingdom by doing the king’s will on earth as it is in heaven. And fifth, through the Holy Eucharist, as we live in time the eschatological reality of the union with the eternal king of kings. At the same time as we wait for God to give us what we need, we with haste offer ourselves to God in each of these five ways.
• Someone who gave to God what belongs to God — and did so with patient haste — was St. Boniface. He was a holy young man who became a Benedictine early in life. At the age of 41 left his English monastery where he was a Latin scholar and a Scripture teacher to become a Missionary. In his first attempt, in modern Holland, he was rejected. He went to Rome where the Pope ordained him and sent him as a Bishop to evangelize Germany, where he helped pagans overcome their worship of trees and through four decades of labor built up the structure of the Church. At the very end of his life, he went back to Frisia, to Holland, to try to visit the tenants of God’s luxurious vine there and help them bear fruit, but they killed him as he was preparing for Mass. Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on him in 2009 in which he stressed his zeal to bring the Gospel to the stubborn even in his ninth decade. “Although he was getting on in years (he was almost 80), he prepared himself for a new evangelizing mission: with about 50 monks he returned to Frisia where he had begun his work. Almost as a prediction of his imminent death, in alluding to the journey of life, he wrote to Bishop Lull, his disciple and successor in the see of Mainz: ‘I wish to bring to a conclusion the purpose of this journey; in no way can I renounce my desire to set out. The day of my end is near and the time of my death is approaching; having shed my mortal body, I shall rise to the eternal reward. May you, my dear son, ceaselessly call the people from the maze of error, complete the building of the Basilica of Fulda that has already been begun, and in it lay my body, worn out by the long years of life.’ While he was beginning the celebration of Mass at Dokkum (in what today is northern Holland) on 5 June 754, he was assaulted by a band of pagans. Advancing with a serene expression he forbade his followers from fighting saying, ‘cease, my sons, from fighting, give up warfare, for the witness of Scripture recommends that we do not give an eye for an eye but rather good for evil. Here is the long awaited day, the time of our end has now come; courage in the Lord!’ These were his last words before he fell under the blows of his aggressors.” Pope Benedict asked, “Centuries later, what message can we gather today from the teaching and marvellous activity of this great missionary and martyr? For those who approach Boniface, an initial fact stands out: the centrality of the word of God, lived and interpreted in the faith of the Church, a word that he lived, preached and witnessed to until he gave the supreme gift of himself in martyrdom. He was so passionate about the word of God that he felt the urgent need and duty to communicate it to others, even at his own personal risk. … His ardent zeal for the Gospel never fails to impress me. At the age of 41 he left a beautiful and fruitful monastic life, the life of a monk and teacher, in order to proclaim the Gospel to the simple, to barbarians; once again, at the age of 80, he went to a region in which he foresaw his martyrdom. By comparing his ardent faith, this zeal for the Gospel, with our own often lukewarm and bureaucratized faith, we see what we must do and how to renew our faith, in order to give the precious pearl of the Gospel as a gift to our time.” His model of total self-giving as a young man, as a Scripture scholar living the evangelical counsels, as a Missionary, as a Bishop, and as a Martyr is a model for us all.
• Today at this Mass, God not only calls us to look in the mirror, see in whose image we are made, and then act in accordance with that dignity. He seeks to conform us ever more into that image through bringing us into the most profound communion possible. As Jesus prepares to give us his Body and Blood today, let’s give Him what belongs to Him as God, to love him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and to commit ourselves to hastening the coming of his kingdom.

The readings for today’s Mass were: