July 18 Tue
The Gospel shows us how the Pharisees and Herodians try to set a trap for our Lord over the question of payment of the tribute; and we see him responding, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”
As Christians we are citizens both of the Church and of civil society, with all the rights and duties that every citizen has. We live and work in the world, and we have to make a stand against the mentality that tries to laicize everything. “Some try to relegate God and the Church to the depths of people's consciences. … This anticlericalism wants to shut God and the Church up within the limits of people's private life, so that the fact of holding Christian faith and morals has no effect on public life at all.”
Yet all just and noble human affairs have a divine meaning, because they come from God and are ordered towards God. If we bear this in mind, we will avoid making the sort of split that is so frequent in the lives of many Catholics.
“Christ separated the fields of jurisdiction of the two authorities of Church and State, to forestall the harmful effects of ‘Caesarism’ and ‘clericalism’. He established the healthy kind of anticlericalism which consists of real, deep love for the priesthood; what a sorry sight it is when the high calling of the priest is cheapened and debased by getting mixed up in mean, worldly projects. He fixed the autonomy of God's Church and the legitimate autonomy enjoyed by civil society in regulating and structuring its affairs.
“But the distinction established by Christ does not in any way mean that religion should be relegated to the sacristy, or that the ordering of human affairs is to be done outside the realm of all divine or Christian law. Because that would be to deny the faith of Christ, which demands obedience from the whole person, body and soul, as an individual and as a member of society.
“Christ's message lights up the whole of a person's life, from its beginning to its end, and not merely the narrow reach of some personal acts of subjective piety. Laicism means a denial of the sort of faith that expresses itself in deeds, the faith that knows that the world's autonomy is only relative, and that the ultimate meaning of everything in the world is the glory of God and the salvation of souls.” St Josemaría
In these days, we should pray intensely to St Joseph, to protect God’s Church, against her external and internal enemies, “Monstra te esse patrem!” “Show us that you are our father and lord!”
Image: The Spousal of Mary and Joseph.