(Twenty-ninth Sunday of the Year (A): This homily was given
on October 19, 2014 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly
[For the audio version of this homily: Twenty-ninth Sunday 2014]
Bishop Tobin made headlines again a couple of weeks ago,
when he publicly criticized a political candidate for governor in the state of
Rhode Island—a candidate who on that day had proudly accepted the endorsement
of Planned Parenthood (the nation’s largest abortion provider), and who had
also announced her intention to try to repeal Rhode Island’s current law
banning partial birth abortion (a procedure that even many pro-choicers admit
is nothing short of infanticide).
Oh yes, and did I mention that this politician also claims
to be Catholic?
All of this, of course, provoked the usual hysterical responses
from those who, in one way or another, support the killing of babies in our
country:
“The Bishop should mind his business.”
“Who is he to push his morality on the rest of us?”
“The Bishop should keep his nose out of politics. Doesn’t he know about the separation of
church and state?”
Now I wonder if these very same people are just as vocal in
their criticism of guys like the Reverend Al Sharpton—who’s a commentator on a
major news network in this country, and who also happens to be a Baptist
minister!
I wonder how many of the Bishop’s critics have also sent
letters to MSNBC recently, saying, “How can you allow a Baptist minister to do
political commentary on your network?
Don’t you know about the separation of church and state?”
I’ll bet you not a single one of them has! Because the truth of the matter is, my
brothers and sisters, this critique only goes in one direction. If you’re pro-life, and pro-traditional
marriage, and a supporter of the Ten Commandments they say these things about
you; if you’re of the opposite persuasion they say nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that’s especially true in the mainstream,
liberal media. You can make the most
partisan political statements imaginable (which Sharpton does every day), and
not a critical word is spoken. Or
written.
Hopefully you realize that all this public criticism is by
design and has a very definite purpose.
Aside from being an attempt to violate the right to free speech of some
American citizens, all of this public criticism is ultimately designed to intimidate! It’s designed to try to intimidate into silence people like Bishop Tobin, and
me, and all those who would take a public stand against the moral evils that
are currently plaguing our society.
Haven’t they figured it out yet that it’s not going to work?
They must be slow learners!
But all of this is not really anything new, as we see in
today’s gospel story from Matthew 22.
Here we have men whom I would describe as “some of the spiritual
ancestors of the critics of Bishop Tobin”—the Pharisees and the
Herodians—trying to find a way to accuse Jesus of either being disloyal to his
religion (Judaism) or disobedient to the “state” (in this case, the Roman
Empire).
The Pharisees were anti-Roman, while the Herodians to a
great extent supported Rome, since the Romans kept them in power. In many respects, the beliefs of these two
groups were at opposite ends of the political and religious spectrums. But they were united on one issue: their
hatred of Jesus.
So they asked our Lord a question that they thought would
trap him: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”
Had Jesus said, “Yes, it is lawful,” the Pharisees would
have accused him to his fellow Jews of being disloyal to his religion; had he said,
“No, it is not lawful,” the Herodians would have denounced him to the Roman
authorities.
Jesus, of course, didn’t take the bait. Instead, he gave the perfect response (which
shouldn’t surprise us in the least because Jesus was—and is—the divine Son of
God!). He asked to see a Roman coin;
then he asked his questioners to identify the person whose image was on the
coin. When they responded by saying,
“Caesar’s,” Jesus answered with his famous line, “Then give to Caesar what is
Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s.”
Which immediately raises a very interesting question: What
is “God’s”? What is it, exactly, that belongs to the Lord?
Well, in the interest of time, let me give you the short
list of the things that DON’T “belong to God”: sin; evil; death—and all the bad
things that follow from those realities.
Like hell.
Which means that EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE LORD’S! Everything
that is genuinely good belongs to God; everything that is true belongs to God;
everything that is rooted in love and that proceeds from love belongs to God. It all belongs to God because it’s all the
gift of his grace!
The problem with the Catholic candidate for governor that
Bishop Tobin criticized the other day is that she doesn’t understand this (and
perhaps she doesn’t care to
understand it, as is the case with all-too-many Catholic politicians these
days—on both sides of the aisle).
If you’re a human being—and especially if you’re
Catholic—your politics “belong to God” (in the sense that you’re supposed to be
guided by HIS DIVINE LAW in forming your political views!).
I hope you realize, my brothers and sisters, that the whole
reason we had slavery in this country for so many years is because a lot of
Christian, white Americans acted like their politics and their business
practices DIDN’T belong to the Lord! Consequently
they disregarded his divine Law in dealing with people of a different skin
color.
And they thought that was perfectly acceptable.
Well it wasn’t.
Actually this idea that everything which is good and true
and loving “belongs to the Lord” is contained in the Lord’s Prayer, which was
given to us by Jesus himself, and which is supposed to be the model for every
other prayer we utter.
In that prayer, we say these very important words: “thy
kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as
it is in heaven.”
There’s no sin, or evil—or death—in heaven. We all know that. Well, if those are the only things that don’t
“belong to God”—and those things are not
to be found in God’s heavenly kingdom—that means that EVERYTHING in heaven
belongs to the Lord!
And if the situation in heaven is supposed to be the model
of the way things should be on earth (which is what we’re saying in that line
of the Our Father!) then that means God’s will and his divine Law are supposed
to be our reference points for EVERYTHING in this life!
The way we conduct ourselves in public; the way we conduct
ourselves in private; the way we conduct ourselves in the bedroom; the way we
do business; the way we raise children; the way we treat the sick; the way we
treat the dying; the way we treat the elderly; the way we act at work; the way
we act at school; the way we act with our friends; the way we treat our
enemies; the way we speak; the way we form our opinions—and yes, the way we
form our political viewpoints: it ALL belongs to the Lord!
Dear Lord, help US to
believe that. Dear Lord, help all
candidates for public office in our country to believe that. And, dear Lord, help us all to live our lives
accordingly. Amen.