The Lord’s Tax

(Homily for Sunday October 22, 2023) 

What is it that belongs to God? What does God want from us?

God wants nothing in particular: He wants everything. Not everything you have, but everything you are. We could actually say that He wants only one thing: you. God wants the coin with His image, which is the human being, made in the image and likeness of God. Like a heavenly coinage, we bear the image of God in our spirits and, since baptism, we bear His inscription in our hearts: “sacred to the Lord.”

Now, what is it to give ourselves to God? Is it just going into a monastery and live only for Him? For some of us, this is exactly what it means but not for all of us. Not all of us are called to consecrate our lives to Him in religious life. But we all are called to a certain consecration, to give ourselves totally in a precise way. Even those of us who live in monasteries or the like, find easier to live in the monastery than to give ourselves to God in this particular way which we are referring today.

What is it that belongs to God? What does God want from us? God wants your judgment, that is, your way of seeing things; your heart, that is, your love above all things; your absolute obedience and your honor; your prayer, that is, your interior and exterior worship and, yes, also your monetary offering according to your possibilities. Let us examine each of these offerings a little bit more.

1.  God wants your judgment, your intelligence. God wants you to see things the way He sees them. Not because He likes imposing on people, but simply because He is right and He wants you to be right as well. He does not want you to be deceived and He wants you to know even those things that you could have never figured out without His telling you. Nobody can see God: how could we have known that God loves us, had He not revealed His plan of salvation to us?

But giving our judgment, our faith to God is difficult. No civil authority on earth can ask you so much as God asks. Believing in God and in all that He says can be challenging sometimes. And yet, we owe as much to God. There is no excuse for not having faith in God. He does not lie, He cannot be deceived and His voice is clear, when people want to listen...

2.  We owe God, also, to love Him above all other things. This is not easy either. Sometimes, putting God first means that we must renounce to some fun, or deny ourselves some pleasure, or lose an opportunity for worldly success. Putting God first may mean also, sometimes, that we must displease a person we love... Many people around us betray God and their consciences and this makes our own faithfulness to Him even harder. Judas betrayed Jesus for money. The other eleven abandoned Jesus for fear of death. We ourselves may have betrayed Jesus in the past for much lesser things or events.

Loving God above other things, above all of them is not so easy as it sounds. But we owe as much to God. Who else has given us so much? Everything we have and everyone in our lives is a gift from God: how could we not be grateful? Who else loves us more than Him, who did more for us than God, who sent His Son to die on a cross for us? Who can promise more than Heaven, as God promises us, if we just love Him back?

3.  We owe God obedience and honor; we owe Him our prayer, our interior prayer and our Sunday worship. We owe also money: according to our possibilities, we have the duty to sustain our churches. But what is this money in comparison to the other things we were discussing previously? Some people would like to do with God as they do with Ceasar: “I have paid my taxes, now let me live my life!” Some people would prefer to pay for a religion which tells them what they want to hear and lets them do what they want... For God, however, taxes are not enough and He himself doesn’t even need our money. Our God is the real deal: not a god of wood or stone who needs our shoulders to be carried from place to place, but a God who carries us on His own shoulders like lost sheep are carried by the shepherd. He is the God who carried on His own shoulders the cross of our sins.

4.  The burden of our sins, also, belongs to God. Do you want to make God happy? Don’t give Him money: give Him your sins, that is, your sorrow for your sins. God cannot forgive those who keep their sins for themselves, those who do not confess their sins, those who do not expose their wounds to the physician. God came to the world to forgive: let us allow Him to do His job. He left the sacrament of Reconciliation as an exchange booth where his administrators lavish mercy in exchange for sins. Sorrow for our own sins, in a sense, buys the heart of God. No money can buy love, no treasure of the universe can pay for God’s love, but repentance for sins... God cannot resist loving a humble, repentant sinner.

What is it, in my life, which belongs to God but I am holding on to it? Is there a point of view which I should give to God? Is there something in my life where God is not first, or something which takes his place sometimes? Am I allowing God to forgive my sins through Reconciliation? May God help us to find happiness in our belonging to Him.