The whole point of the gospel reading this weekend is, rather than the vexed subject of taxes to government, what is due from us to God our Father. Nevertheless, our readings today give us to think about the relationship between the secular powers of this world and the supreme authority of the divine. We may admit as Christians that the divine authority always comes first, both chronologically (for God is before time) and in priority at every moment (for we must necessarily put Him before everybody and everything else). We want to live in countries and societies where the authority of the state tends to work alongside the divine for the common good; sadly, that is often nothing but an ideal in our countries, after long centuries when (since the king’s reformation in England in the sixteenth century and the religious wars in Europe that came after) the authority of the state has increasingly in vital matters challenged the authority of God in faith and morals, and European governments in our own times do not pretend to be Christian at all.
But we Catholics are not overly perturbed by this, for we have lived under persecution switched on and off since Roman days. Even when we seemed to have converted the Roman Empire from the fourth century onwards, we were challenged by apostate or heretical kings and other potentates. As we worked out a tottering alliance with the great ones of Europe, the shadow of Islam arose in the East and some two-thirds of the Christian world was lost within a very short period of time. Following the high-medieval period of revived classical learning, the forces of secularisation grew stronger, nation states grew stronger, and the new protestant religions and their derivatives shattered our unity further. In our own times, the Christian heartlands are being weakened further with a rather forced political programme of multiculturalism.
It seems to me that the Church in her reduced state today is very like she was in the first centuries, when she was a minority in the pagan Roman empire – for, despite growing numbers of people coming to faith in Christ, vast numbers of souls whose parents and grandparents declared themselves to be Christian have been now taught to despise and ridicule what their families have fought and died for in the past. They have been taught to look at the artefacts of the Christian religion (often in museums) as items of a distant past, they have no great care for the old church buildings that still push their towers into the heavens all around. They are the new crowds of the unreligious, those who claim no religious tradition whatsoever, who are puzzled by the very idea of religion.
This is the power of the secular state in enmity with religion and tradition in general, these days atheistically either socialist or outright communist, with its enduring control of schools and of popular media of every type. There is a social pressure on people to conceal any religious allegiance, to relegate Christianity especially to the back-streets and away from the public square. As in Roman days, societies of dedicated Christians seem to be isolated, and we are often hopelessly divided. As indeed those Hebrews were in our first reading, after Jerusalem was destroyed and the nation dispersed into exile in various parts of the known world. And the prophet now says that God has returned to restore His people, anointing the secular king of Persia Cyrus (the Great, who per the reading does not recognise the God of Israel) as the new deliverer, in the sense that Cyrus would now permit a handful of Jews exiled in Babylonia to return to Jerusalem and rebuild.
“Thus saith the Lord to My anointed Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue nations before his face, and to turn the backs of kings, and to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before thee, and will humble the great ones of the earth; I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and will burst the bars of iron. And I will give thee hidden treasures, and the concealed riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I am the Lord Who call thee by thy name, the God of Israel. For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my elect, I have even called thee by thy name; I have made a likeness of thee, and thou hast not known Me. I am the Lord, and there is none else: there is no God, besides me; I girded thee, and thou hast not known Me, that they may know who are from the rising of the sun, and they who are from the west, that there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord that do all these things. Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just; let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour; and let justice spring up together: I the Lord have created him.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 45: 1-8 [link]
The story of the restoration that followed this work of Cyrus we will find in the books of Ezra and Nehemia in the Old Testament. After the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem (AD 70) a few decades after the Resurrection of our Lord, both Jews and Christians would again have been traumatised and waiting for new Cyruses to arrive. The Church has found her own Cyruses among good Roman emperors like Constantine and Theodosius, great Frankish kings like Charlemagne, her own saintly kings like our Edward the Confessor and Louis IX of France, etc. Shall we hope for a Cyrus in our own days? A great leader who will, as the psalm says, give the Lord glory and power (rather than to himself), take his crown off as he genuflects before Christ the King?
The twin powers of the Successor of David in the OT and the high-priest of the Temple in Jerusalem were represented by the prophets as two olive trees; we see this image in the prophecy of Zechariah. Both have a power of governance – one secular and the other sacred – both ideally must in their own ways lead men and women to God. Ideally. Practically, our Holy Father in Rome and the bishops often themselves look like politicians and diplomats as they interface with the modern and unbelieving kings of this world.
And the Church teaches us to do in our own lives what her Master once taught to confound the Roman-friendly Jews of His own day – secular Jews, no matter their religious dress, hence His charge of hypocrisy. We are to pay what is due to the masters of this world, but we shall not forget in prayer, the devout life and in worship to give God what is His.
“Then the Pharisees going, consulted among themselves how to ensnare Him in His speech. And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, ‘Master, we know that Thou art a true speaker, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man, for Thou dost not regard the person of men. Tell us therefore what dost Thou think, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?’ But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said, ‘Why do you tempt Me, ye hypocrites? Shew Me the coin of the tribute.’ And they offered Him a penny. And Jesus saith to them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ They say to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’ Then He saith to them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s.'”
Gospel of S. Matthew, 22: 15-21 [link]
