What Belongs to God

October 19, 2008

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.

I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun men may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other. Isaiah 45:5-6

“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Matthew 22:21

Piety

Lord Jesus, help us to be with you – on your side – as the hypocrites circle around you with their traps and snares. Aid us in our quest to know God and all that is granted to us. Make us willing and happy servants eager to render – give back – to God everything that God has already provided to us in love. Amen.

Study

How am I holding out on God? The question is a simple one. The injunction is to do everything we do for the love of the Lord. What do I do for what I get out of it? I need to keep my selfishness under control. How can I render to God all that belongs to God and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar? What belongs to Caesar? Caesar equates out as all the rights of my brothers and sisters. I am selfish if I do what I do out of self love. What I am getting out of my work for myself is where selfishness is born. What I do for the sake of others is how I live with the Lord. Selflessness is how I give myself away to my brothers and sisters. What am I doing in my life that has Caesar written all over it? Piety is how I have turned my life over to God. How I write God all over my life! The Contemplative in Action grace is letting the Lord work in every part of my life. The seeing of all I do as prayer is easy to say. It is harder to accomplish. We pray in our lives in order that our work may become prayer. The pure Contemplative works so that he or she might be free to pray. The gradual transformation of life into prayer is a work of love. I would love my God so much that I give him everything that I am about. It is easier done as we get older and see life as a gift that we are gradually giving back to God.

The Lord has called us by name. Just as the Lord knows every star of the sky by name, he knows us as much more than a grain of sand. We are his children by virtue of Christ living in us. All our surrenders are to Christ being our life. God sees his son in us not just because of our Baptism. Every Eucharist we are part of gives us the chance to live in Christ. We have his life in us even as he takes us into his life. Our eating of his body and drinking of his blood gives us his life and a claim on heaven. Eucharist makes us children of God even as we become his Mystical Body by our togetherness in his Church.

Action

We need to give thanks to God for each other. It is important we remember each other in our prayers. That is how we give each other back to God. Even as Eucharist is a remembrance of what Christ has done for us, we need to remember what others have done for us. Thus we are loved by God and can live in the power of the Holy Spirit with great conviction. God has put his people into our lives and through his people he opens the door to eternal life for us. We keep the doors open for each other in how we serve one another.