Darlington, Wisconsin
We
are God’s first
By Most
Rev. Samuel J. Aquila *
Editor's note: This is
an edited homily given Oct. 19, 2008 at the Cathedral of St. Mary,
Fargo.
In our Gospel for this
weekend, we hear of how the Pharisees and Herodians plot together to trap Jesus
in his speech. It is an interesting combination for the Pharisees were
the zealous keepers of the law. They were anti-Roman. They
distrusted and disliked the Herodians. The Herodians were supporters of
Herod, who was supported by the Roman government. They were comfortable
with the regime and, in that comfort, they did not want to make any waves.
The Pharisees and Herodians
hated each other, but their hate for Jesus was far greater. And so they
plotted with each other. They want to entrap Jesus in his speech.
Notice how they approach him. They call him “Teacher” and say “we know
that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance
with the truth.” They ask him if it is lawful to pay the census tax to
Caesar. They know full well that if Jesus responds to their question with
a “yes” or “no” answer, they will have entrapped him. If he said “Yes,
you are to pay the taxes to Caesar,” the people would be up in arms because the
people of Israel mostly sided with the Pharisees. And if he said, “No,
you are not to pay the tax,” then the Romans would go after him and attack him
and get rid of him for causing insurrection.
Jesus’ response is to ask
them to show him the coin then to ask them a question, “Whose image is on this
and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” And Jesus replied,
“Then render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Matthew
22:20-21).
It is important to
understand that the king’s authority and power over his people extended as far
as his coins with his image on it were used. That is where his power and
authority rested, wherever his money was used. Jesus granted that Caesar,
the secular power, had a true role to play in society and economics, but Jesus
primarily affirmed the essential principle that God comes first.
Why? Because instead of being simply a king, a human power for the good
of society, God is the source of each society and every life. He is the
creator of all.
An even more beautiful
truth is brought to mind by the symbol of an image on a coin. Because every
human being is created in the image and likeness of God, each human person
bears the mark of God’s love, protection and authority in their very
person. From the very beginning that truth has been taught, revealed in
Sacred Scripture – that every human being is created in the image and likeness
of God as evidenced in Genesis.
As we reflect upon this
encounter, we can ask ourselves, “What does that say for us today in our own
time?” and “How is Jesus today speaking to us?”
We live in a country that
is facing an election. It is an election that is difficult, to say the
least. Both parties have abandoned basic principles concerning human
dignity. We live in a country where the national religion has truly
become atheism, whether it is in the actual denial of belief in God, or in the
existence of practical atheism, living as if God did not exist.
We know that our
forefathers, in establishing the Declaration of Independence, spoke of the law
of nature and nature’s God. There was a basic recognition that all rights
come from God, not from a monarch or the state. Our Declaration of
Independence states in no uncertain terms, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.” They knew within their hearts and within their
minds through reason that there is a Creator who is over all peoples.
There is to be no imposition of a particular religion, but there is to be the
freedom of religion. They knew that God, not man, is the source of life
and society. The Creator is the underlying essential principle behind
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Some two-hundred and fifty
years earlier, Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher both recognized that
truth. They were beheaded because they understood the basic principle
that in any society for a Catholic, in every civil society, God comes
first. Thomas More would say before he died, “I am the king’s loyal
servant, but God’s first.”
When we move forward in time,
James Madison, the “father of the U.S. Constitution” recognized the duty of
every person to render homage to the Creator. He makes a statement that
many politicians today would challenge, that one’s duty to God comes first
“…both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil
Society.”
Today, Catholic politicians
and individual voters on both sides of the aisle have lost the sense of this
fundamental principle that underlies every just and enduring society.
Most especially, they have lost the sense of the inalienable right to life for
the unborn child. Even without considering God in the equation, human
life, for every human being, begins at the moment of conception. That is
when human life begins. That is when your life began. And that is
when Rep. Pelosi’s life began. That is when Sen. Biden’s life
began. That is when Sen. Obama’s life began and Sen. McCain’s life began.
Sadly, the dignity of human
life from the moment of conception is lost today. The truth nonetheless
exists. Our forefathers recognized it but present day politicians and
voters do not.
Furthermore, we have lost
too this fundamental principle in what it means to pursue happiness. We
see the attempted pursuit of happiness without God and the collapse of this
pursuit in Wall Street and the economics of today. Greed has guided the hearts
of men and women, in which a 40 million dollar bonus is not enough in one
year. When you take God out of the equation and life is lived as if he
did not exist, the only thing left to pursue is materialism, because there is
no life after death, there is no judgment. And so greed guides the hearts
of men and women when we lose that basic essential understanding of the
presence of God.
We see that abandonment of
God’s presence, too, in the area of human sexuality. Fifty percent of
marriages end in divorce. Women are treated as sexual toys and
objects. People proclaim a “good” in same sex unions, living
promiscuously, and moving from one intimate relationship to the next.
Once we lose God in the
pursuit of happiness, and once we lose the sense of the dignity of the human
person and the God in whose image and likeness we are truly created, then we
lose all sense of any moral compass or any moral standard. Without God, can
there be any morality at all? Or is it set by the thinking of the day
that can change from generation to generation, rooted in no truths that are
valid for every person in every generation?
We as a nation stand at a
crossroads. There is a fork in the road between the culture of life and
the culture of death. The culture of death made great inroads with
activist judges in the 1973 court that created a so-called right to
abortion. They, like the Pharisees and the Herodians, hid behind lies,
they hid behind deceit, they hid behind a lack of reason and the majority said,
“It is okay to destroy human life in all nine months of pregnancy.”
Judges, politicians and
voters who went so far as to state that human life may be destroyed at the
beginning are now attacking human life at its end by support for assisted
suicide. The next step will be to deny healthcare for the elderly and
handicapped because they are no more of any use to society. Once the
right to life is no longer understood as a gift from God, but attributed to
people by the state, the road to further atrocities against human life is a
spiral downward quite rapidly.
What many Catholic
politicians and citizens have done by their actions and votes today is to sell
their souls, because what they have done is to say, “We will be created in the
image and likeness, not of God, but of a Democratic platform, of a Republican
platform -- that’s whose image and likeness we will embrace.” There is
neither reason nor logic in their statements, but anything to gain power and
this compromise leads only to blindness and darkness.
My sisters and brothers,
you and I are not created in the image and likeness of Obama or McCain or a
political party. We are created in the image and likeness of God.
We must, as our forefathers did, place the God-given inalienable rights first,
beginning with the right to life from the moment of conception until natural
death. As bad as the economy is, as bad as the war is, the destruction of
innocent human life, especially in the womb, is a greater evil, and correction
of this grave evil must take place. Each of us has a role in making this
correction in our duties as citizens. To say that “the battle is lost” is to
condone an intrinsic evil that will only lead to further evils.
A hundred years from now,
this election will just be a moment in history. A hundred years from now
all of us, or certainly most of us, will be dead. But I assure you, a
hundred years from now, if we continue as a society on the course that we are
on, embracing a culture of death, our society will no longer exist, because
tyranny will have its way, as will atheism.
When there is no
recognition of the primacy of God and human beings decide what is good and what
is evil, anything can be justified. All we have to do is look at history
and the atheism of China, the atheism of Russia, the atheism of Cambodia, and
the atheism of Nazi Germany. Countries that embrace atheism reveal the
truth – that is, if we do not embrace, as our forefathers did, the laws of nature
and nature’s God, we will eventually collapse as a society.
As we continue with our
celebration of the Eucharist, I encourage us during the course of this week to
reflect upon the teaching of Jesus. Reflect upon, “How have I been
influenced more by the politics of the secular world than by the truth of the
Gospel reflected in the teachings of the Church? How have secular
politics led me to ignore the truths upon which our country was founded?”
Our forefathers recognized clearly that there are self-evident truths, “that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.” All of that is rooted in the understanding that, yes, we must
render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but we must render first to God what is
God’s. God is at the heart and the foundation of all inalienable
rights. He is the one who bestows them. A just society supports
these rights and makes certain that they are recognized.
And so, throughout this
week, let Jesus speak to your own heart. Where is he calling you to
conversion and to a change of heart? He is calling all Catholics to be
men and women of courage, to stand for the truth. He is calling for
fortitude and, yes, that may mean martyrdom, but it will also mean
faithfulness. For as Thomas More knew in his heart, we too must know in
our hearts, that, yes, we are loyal citizens, but God’s first.
Printed with permission
from the Diocese of Fargo, North Dakota on The Catholic News Agency Web
site.
I copied it as it was no
longer available on that web site.
-M. Robiolio
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