If
we render unto God what is God’s, what is left for Caesar?
I
have often found observing children, especially as they play, to be a good
source for reflecting on theology. One
afternoon I was visiting with a friend and his wife. They have a son, Matt, who is about 5 years
old. They had invited another couple
over, who also brought their little 5 year old daughter, Samantha. We adults carried on doing adult things, and the
children carried on doing childish things.
I have to admit that the childish things seemed far more
interesting. But being an adult I could
only observe from a distance. Matt was
being a good little boy trying to play with Samantha. But clearly, this was a bit of a struggle for
him. For having Samantha there meant
that he had to share. Watching them
play, there were clearly toys that Matt was willing to share with Samantha, and
toys that she, as long as Matt had something to do about it, was not going to
touch. He would push the toys that he
wanted to share towards Samantha, and then back away guarding the others. This of course made the other toys only more
enticing to Samantha, and within minutes a fight broke out and parental
policing was needed. These toys were like a part of Matt. And there were clearly parts of himself that
Matt was willing to share, and other parts that he was not going to give up.
If
we render unto God what is God’s, what is left for Caesar?
The
Gospel we heard today has been used in many ways to defend and develop numerous
types of political theologies and philosophies. It has even been used to defend liberal
democracies, especially as seen in the United States. I am not going to enter into that debate
here. But I do believe that this Gospel poses to us all a challenge that most
likely we (and this includes myself) struggle to live: A challenge that can be seen in light of Matt
and his toys. Like Matt, there are parts
of ourselves that we are willing to render unto God, and parts of ourselves
that we are not yet willing to hand over.
In
my first two years in the missions I would get so excited for Christmas and
Easter. Not only because this
represented the highest liturgical time of the year. But also, because at this time, I would be
able to see the classic “Chreasters” return to Mass. You know, the people who are Catholic and
only go to Mass on Christmas and Easter, hence Chreasters. Now I know that it is easy to get frustrated
with these people. On the one hand it is
good that at least they are making an effort to be present. At least they haven’t forgotten completely
about their faith. On the other hand, we
know that FAITH IS SO MUCH MORE THAN THIS.
When Jesus says that we must render unto God what is God’s, he is not
saying that thinking about faith twice a year is sufficient. He is saying that God requires all of us, he
requires everything, he asks for our full devotion and dedication and will. All of our love. This is what differentiates
Catholicism from many of the post-modern manifestations of religion. Catholicism requires all of us: and this is
why it is both a path to true joy, but also something that requires tremendous
sacrifice and even pain on our part.
But
before we become too hard on the Chreasters, it might be worth admitting that
maybe we all are Chreasters in our own way.
· We come to church
and light our candle and we feel good about ourselves. And we have done our prayer deed, and don’t
think about praying for another month.
· We check Sunday
mass off the list and then give little thought to worshipping God out in our so-called
public lives.
· We volunteer on a
committee at church and think that well, we are doing quite a bit, and so we
have figured out what it means to be Christian.
· We give to charity
and support the church, but we don’t give much thought whether the way in which
we are earning our money is actually doing more harm to others than good.
The
list could go on. We are all guilty of
this: priests, laity, and religious. We
all are Chreasters at some level in our own heart. We do
our minimum, and oftentimes these are very good things. But we fail to see that faith could be so
much more.
Part
of the problem, as many of us know, is the way in which modern society is set
up. Everything attempts to stand on its
own; to be autonomous, and therefore everything becomes fragmented and
separated. What happens at church stays
in church, what happens at work stays at work, what happens on Friday night
stays at Friday night. Morality exists
at church and ethics becomes what is done in public. We then get caught up in this system that
dissects us and fragments us, we become this kind of person here and that kind
of person there. And if we are lucky, we
barely render unto God what is God’s on Sunday morning. And then it can only be
true that the Mass becomes boring, that faith becomes irrelevant: for faith is
meant to be universal, to penetrate every part of our lives and every part of
reality. That is what it means to be
catholic.
I
suppose some could deny this narrative, and they are free to do so. It is bleak and not something that
particularly makes us happy. But my
experience as a priest in the missions, especially when dealing with families
highlights this reality. Hispanic
families would emigrate from Mexico and move into the rural areas of the
South. For the first generation of
parents faith was everything. They came from a heavily Catholic culture. They
rendered unto God what was God’s. They
rendered everything. But just one
generation later, as I listened to these parents with tears in their eyes,
their own kids no longer cared about faith.
Caught up in the culture of the United States God was forced from the
lives of their kids to being something only in the Church, then only in the family,
then only personal, and then it was gone.
As
this first session of the Synod on the Family comes to an end, I think it is
important to highlight this crisis of faith as being the biggest threat to the
family, and thus to the church and to society.
I have the greatest admiration for the families that go to St.
Kwintens. I have gotten to know many of you
already and look forward to meeting many more.
You sacrifice tremendously for your kids. You are trying and your efforts are
inspiring. But out of love as your
priest and also a friend, I think it is important that we ask this question
together: What will make our families
here any different from those Hispanic families in the missons? Will we have the same tears for our children
a generation from now? I know there are
exceptions to every rule and that even when some families do everything right their
children don’t remain in the faith. BUT
this should not keep us from asking this important question: How can families model to their children that
we are called to render unto God what is God’s?
For it is only within family that we can learn that our belief in God,
our Catholic faith, must penetrate every single aspect of our being and of our
lives. Unless we fight for this
everyday and make cognizant that so much in society is pushing our families in
the opposite direction we will be no different than those countless Mexican
parents wondering what happened to their kids.
When
my friend’s son Matt struggled to share all of his toys with Samantha, he got
down on his knees and modeled to his son what it meant to share all of himself
with others. May we get down on our
knees and ask God that we might be able to model to our kids what it means to
render unto God what belongs to God. In
the end, let us pray that there is nothing much left for Caesar.
