Render to God what is God’s
The 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time
October 22, 2023
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Isaiah 45:1-6; Psalm 96; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21
Isaiah laments that the people of Jacob were specially called by God, the chosen people, and they proved that they did not know God because their actions did not align with God’s reign. Matthew points out the same situation as the Pharisees and Herodians, who profess to speak for God, reveal that they do not know God. If they did, they would not try to trap Jesus or put him to the test. Rather than speaking about how Jesus was the moral superhero, the most clever and wise one, the wittier one, we will speak about how we know God, and then how we act as a disciple of God.
Let’s look at Cyrus who is mentioned by Isaiah in the first reading. As the king of Persia, Iran, a pagan king, he allowed the people of Jacob to return to their homeland and to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile. The common thought was that God used pagan kings to chasten the people when they refused to repent of their idolatries. The lesson we need to learn is that idolatries and ideologies separate us from God and from one another and it is not the way forward for people who believe in God. It strikes me that some people might have an image of God that needs to be expanded and to see God’s realm as Jesus showed us. Jesus points to God as, “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me.”
The first writers of the bible were brilliant in the ways they conceived of God as the artist creator of the universe and of humans. God participated in all aspects of creation and participates in all created things. We are not God, but every single person is born out of the love of God and has the capacity to be united with God. God expresses this love in a unique personal form, like he did with the people of Jacob. God has a personal relationship with each of us while remaining the transcendent creator of the many universes. Through our faith, we see Christ as the communion of the divinity expressed in personal form. As God is in each person, Christ’s role is to reconcile every other human with God.
We do not worship a doctrine or an idea; we worship a triune God, who is the root reality of all existence. Our soul has an interior depth where we commune with God, whose love is expressed to us uniquely. Jesus of Nazareth was teaching the Pharisees and Herodians that we can learn to trust the areas of discomfort and tension, that darkness and unknown where fear operates, because the tenderness of God’s love is already there. Rendering to God what is God’s means that we must let God’s love heal us of the opposing tensions within us.
We cannot live a life where God is privatized, individualized, and removed from everyday life. Our world needs to be rebuilt and reimagined along God’s plan for the world where we see our interconnectedness anddependence upon one another. We need to value human life and all life forms, which includes our earth. The world can become a pattern of friendship, interdependence, complementarity, cooperation, and creative joy. Union with God is not withdrawal or separation from the world, like keeping Caesar and God separate, but a dedicated, integrated, and absorption into it. We must make our way to heaven through earth. Our triune God reveals a spirituality of unity.
Scripture for Daily Mass
Monday: (Romans 4) Abraham did not doubt God's promise in unbelief; rather, he was empowered by faith and gave glory to God and was fully convinced that what God had promised he was also able to do. That is why it was credited to him as righteousness.
Tuesday: (Romans 5) Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned. If by that one person's transgression the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.
Wednesday: (Romans 6) Sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires. And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness.
Thursday: (Romans 6) I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature. For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness for lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
Friday (Romans 7) I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want,
but I do the evil I do not want. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
Saturday (Ephesians 2) You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.
Gospel:
Monday: (Luke 12) "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me."
He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich,
one's life does not consist of possessions."
Tuesday: (Luke 12) "Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Wednesday (Luke 12) Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
Thursday (Luke 12) I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
Friday (Luke 12) When you see a cloud rising in the west you say immediately that it is going to rain–and so it does; and when you notice that the wind is blowing from the south you say that it is going to be hot–and so it is. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky.
Saturday (Luke 6) Jesus went up to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles
Saints of the Week
October 23: John of Capistrano, priest, had a vision of Francis of Assisi when he was imprisoned during an Italian civil war at which time he was the governor of Perugia. He entered the Franciscan Friars Minor in 1415 after ending his marriage. He preached missions throughout Europe including a mission to Hungary to preach a crusade against the Turks. After the Christian victory at the Battle of Belgrade in 1456, John died.
October 24: Anthony Claret, bishop (1807-1870) adopted his father's weaving career as a young man but continued to study Latin and printing. After entering seminary, he began preaching retreats and giving missions. He published and distributed religious literature and founded the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He was appointed archbishop of Cuba but was called back to Spain to be Queen Isabella II's confessor. He resumed publishing until the revolution of 1868 sent him into exile.
October 28: Simon and Jude, apostles (first century) were two of the Twelve Disciples called by Jesus, but little is known about them. We think they are Simon the Zealot and Judas, the son of James. Simon was most likely a Zealot sympathizer who would have desired revolution against Rome; Jude is also called Thaddeus, and is patron saint of hopeless causes. Both apostles suffered martyrdom.
This Week in Jesuit History
- October 22, 1870: In France, Garibaldi and his men drove the Jesuits from the Colleges of Dole and Mont Roland.
- October 23, 1767: The Jesuits who had been kept prisoners in their college in Santiago, Chile, for almost two months were led forth to exile. In all 360 Jesuits of the Chile Province were shipped to Europe as exiles.
- October 24, 1759: 133 members of the Society, banished from Portugal and put ashore at Civita Vecchia, were most kindly received by Clement XIII and by the religious communities, especially the Dominicans.
- October 25, 1567. St Stanislaus Kostka arrived in Rome and was admitted into the Society by St Francis Borgia.
- October 26, 1546. The Province of Portugal was established as the first province in the Society, with Simao Rodriguez as its first provincial superior.
- October 27, 1610. The initial entrance of the Jesuits into Canada. The mission had been recommended to the Society by Henry IV.
- October 28, 1958. The death of Wilfrid Parsons, founder of Thought magazine and editor of America from 1925 to 1936.
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