Giving to God what belongs to God: 29th Sunday Year A Homily Sermon

by Fr. Tommy Lane

There is tension in the Gospel between Jesus and his opponents who tried to trap him. Jesus resolves the tension with his famous statement, “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Matt 22:21) Jesus’ reply asks to give respect to civil authorities and to God. It is the balance of navigating and living in the world while honoring God properly, living as good citizens in the world honoring our duties to society while also placing God first. We are, so to speak, under two masters or authorities; we are under civil authorities and we are under God.

When people don’t give proper respect to either of the two authorities, then problems follow:

Thomas Cromwell under Henry VIII, from the 1530s disbanded friaries, religious houses, monasteries, and convents in this country. Traveling around this country, we can see many ruins of monasteries suppressed during that time and in the following years.
During the French Revolution in two days alone in September 1792 about two hundred Catholic priests and bishops were killed in Paris, and between then and 1799 thousands of priests were deported or forced into hiding or executed by guillotine and many nuns also suffered the same fate.
During the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, thirteen bishops, over 4000 priests and over 2000 religious brothers and monks were murdered, and 238 nuns were murdered, most of them simply because they were clergy or religious.
During the Cristero War in Mexico, the decade before the Spanish Civil War, about 90 Catholic priests were murdered.
Over 1000 Catholic priests were killed in the concentration camp in Dachau in Germany during the Second World War.

That is what happens when the balance between giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and giving to God what belongs to God is not respected. That is why, for example, the Catechism tells us that we are obliged not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons, or to the Gospel (Catechism §2242).

Thank God we don’t have to live with those fears of past times now in this country. But there could be other ways in which we might give too much to Caesar to the detriment of giving to God. Who might Caesar be now who is distracting from giving to God what belongs to God? It could be social media and the twenty-four-hour social media fast recommended for this country last week highlights the problem it has become for some. Caesar could be peer pressure for both young and adults who do not stand up for their faith and give witness when they ought and that is a pity because giving witness to the faith in a conversation would hopefully help others.

The Caesar of our time that could be distracting from giving to God what belongs to God could be consumerism and money. Solzhenitsyn who served eight years of forced labor in Russia (1945-1953) was invited to give the Harvard commencement speech in 1978. He said Western consumerism and Eastern communism had made the same mistake: trying to satisfy the eternal human soul with purely material things. In it he said,

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West.

The root cause of giving to Caesar what does not belong to Caesar and not giving to God what belongs to God is not recognizing who we are: God’s creatures with an eternal soul and our destiny is eternal life with God. Since we have been created by God with an inbuilt longing for God, trying to satisfy that longing by giving to Caesar what does not belong to Caesar will not bring peace, only unhappiness. CS Lewis wrote,

A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity p118)

St. Thomas Aquinas, in a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, wrote,

In this life no one can fulfill his longing, nor can any creature satisfy man’s desire. Only God satisfies, He infinitely exceeds all other pleasures. That is why man can rest in nothing but God.
(Liturgy of the Hours, Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday, Office of Readings)

During a Wednesday audience in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI said,

Man bears within himself a thirst for the infinite, a nostalgia for eternity, a search for beauty, a desire for love, a need for light and truth, which drive him toward the Absolute; man bears within himself the desire for God. (May 11, 2011)

So, spending some time in prayer every day is a must. It is giving to God what belongs to God and helps us keep our lives in balance.

Mission Sunday today reminds us of giving to God what belongs to God. We remember missionaries scattered throughout the world bringing the Gospel so that others will have the peace and happiness of knowing God.

We are to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. When Caesar doesn’t respect God, it leads to all kinds of chaos as the ruins of monasteries all over this country demonstrate, leads to the chaos of social media gone out of control, and the chaos consumerism. We have been created by God for God and will only be happy when we give to God what belongs to God.

This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.

More Homilies for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday Year A

Giving to Caesar and to God 2023

Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God 2014