Find the Coin

Find the Coin

Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Piety

Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and be no longer stiff-necked. For the LORD, your God is the God of gods, the LORD of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who has no favorites, accepts no bribes; who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and befriends the alien, feeding and clothing him. So, you too must befriend the alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy 10:16-19

But that we may not offend them, go to the sea, drop in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up. Open its mouth and you will find a coin worth twice the temple tax. Give that to them for me and for you.” Matthew 7:27

Study

“Circumcise, therefore, the foreskins of your hearts.” The notes in the NABRE point out that this passage and others like it bring our awareness to the fact that the “uncircumcised heart” is closed and unreceptive to God, just as “uncircumcised ears” are closed to the word of the Lord, and “uncircumcised lips” are a hindrance to speaking on behalf of the Lord.

If that is not a theme calling on us to change, then I do not know what can be more…explicit. Moses is not resorting the words which would be used by Jesus and John the Baptist. He could have just said, “Repent.” But no. Moses has to be even more explicit about the need for us to change. “Circumcise your heart.” Cut out of your heart anything which keeps you from respecting the awesome power of God, following his ways exactly, and loving and serving Him all our days.

Jesus steps up his efforts to differentiate between His disciples and the subjects of the belligerent Roman rulers. To avoid even so much as the appearance of divided loyalty, he tells Simon HOW to get the money to pay the tax as a foreigner so that the rulers would not see Simon and Jesus as royal subjects of the king. In this way, Simon befriends the alien by becoming like a foreigner.

At this stage in Matthew’s Good News, I cannot imagine Simon Peter not going out to retrieve that coin from the stomach of a fish at the bottom of the sea. That is the coin of freedom. Just as Jonah was borne anew when he emerged from the belly of the whale, this coin will free Simon from the temple tax so he can fully rely upon God.

Action

The primary duty of every disciple is to listen to the word of God. But the mission does not stop there. We then have to bring it to life by putting it into practice. How do these readings ask you to change? How can you act more following God’s way and not the direction of the world?