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This week, we witness yet another attempt to trap Jesus. His enemies approached Him with the question of interpreting the greatest commandment. From the basic 10 Commandments, the body of Mosaic Laws had expanded to more than 600 precepts. But Jesus was able to reach into the seething mess of do’s and don’ts to string together two strands of the tradition that combined both the love of God which was taken from Deuteronomy (6:4-5) and the love of neighbour which was taken from Leviticus (19:18).
There appears to be a priority when it comes to how we love. Jesus began by stating that we ought to love God with all our being and might and that the second love resembles the first and that is to love our neighbour as ourselves.
This priority does not indicate that the latter is less important. To better state, perhaps it can be phrased that the love of the invisible God is expressed through the love for our neighbour. The 1st Reading provides the context of knowing who our neighbour is. The Israelites were reminded that they were once disenfranchised and that the Lord heard their cries and came to their rescue. In other words, God reaching out to the oppressed Israelites becomes the basis for our assistance toward those who need help—namely, the stranger, the widows and the orphans. God loves the poor and those marginalised by society.
We express our love for God through expanding space for these whom the Lord Himself loves. Take for example these quotes by two Church Fathers. A homily of St John Chrysostom is cited in the Catechism (#2446) that “Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold but theirs”. He is echoed by St Ambrose who remarked that “You are not making a gift of your possessions to poor persons. You are handing over to them what is theirs. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all and not only to the rich”.
The richer we are, the more alien this sounds and the more danger of becoming lukewarm. There could be an explanation for our jadedness or forgetfulness. As broadcast media evolved from print to video, we have become accustomed to seeing people die unnecessarily that death does not faze or impact us anymore. Disaster numbs us and when requests come one after another, some might call it compassion fatigue. In the same manner, branding and advertisements have helped to promote wanton wastefulness as normal. Just like “clutter-blindness” at home, we are no longer moved by the reality that many are languishing from the wants of basic necessities in life.
The Church has been consistent in sounding out that the love of God must always have as its horizon the love for the poor. As gap between rich and poor widens, the Church embraces a position consistent with God’s option for the marginalised. God is called the Father of widows, orphans and the poor. The Church in her desire to be authentic stands with God on this option.
The two phenomena of compassion fatigue and lukewarmness possibly indicate that our priority has been underemphasised. In fact, compassion fatigue is actually a call towards understanding our priority. Love for the poor is never proof of our love for God because so many philanthropists love the poor and work on behalf of them. Many are of them are atheistic humanists who have no belief in God. But the contrary is true. Love for the poor is a direct consequence of our love for Christ.
Part of our challenge is that we will always be faced with the existential reality of inequality. When Judas protested about the expensive nard used for anointing, Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you”. No matter how tempting, the solution is not more programmes to eradicate poverty. Noble or “Nobel” as it may be in this post-pandemic era where more are pushed into the category of extremely poor. The answer to poverty is to encounter Jesus at a personal and existential level.
Mother Teresa is our prime example in this era of global inequality. We are fascinated by her reach towards the poor. But the truth of her love for them is Jesus Christ. Her intense love for Him opened her eyes and heart to the destitute and the rejected. It was not an idea of equality that drove her charity. It was Jesus Christ and not an idea of how the world can be reorganised or reshaped. The way to love the world was and still is a person, Jesus Christ. In Him everything we are and do find its meaning. He is God for whom we ought and desire to love with our whole being. He is man from whom every man, woman and child finds his or her image. He is not an idea but the only Person who can give us joy and the inclination to love.
In the love of our neighbour, the presence of the poor remains our challenge. St James says that faith without good works is dead. Love for the poor is really a test of faith. In way, many are taking St James seriously in desiring to make the world a more equal place. The mistake is to begin with the idea of justice for all humanity. Philanthropy has shown us that it is possible to love one’s neighbour without loving God. The greatest experiment of philanthropy was Communism. The heart of Communism is based on love for our fellowmen. The philosophy that everyone should have equal access to the goods of the world springs from a noble love of humanity. While the principle is laudably philanthropic, it does not flow from the love of God and the systematic failure of Communism has shown us that our love for humanity cannot flow from an ideal because it will lead to abuse.
What we can do is to turn the saying around in order to ground these two commandments. The usual pose is pivoted on “How to love the invisible God if one does not love the visible brother?”. When the order is reversed, it is precisely that “I give honour to the invisible God and love Him with my entire being that I am able to love the Christ who is in front of me. Philanthropy is not “theophilic”. Rather Theophilus, “the love of God” is the reason for philanthropy. Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament in adoration and you will understand what that means. The same Jesus hung on the Cross, in His love for the Father, He cried out “Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing”. He showed us that our path to a better world has to be different. The highway to a graced society begins with our personal and existential encounter with Jesus, not an ideal! Even the Synodal process will be a failure if it is not centred on Jesus.
It is Jesus. It is always Jesus. It will always be Jesus.
There is a connexion between politics and heaven, between our engagement with this world and our eternal destiny.
If life is a training ground for the afterlife, then political involvement is not contrary to who we are as Christians. The word politics is derived from the Greek word for “city”, the “polis”. Thus, politics makes us all citizens of both the City of Man and the City of God. Hence, the art or science or skills of social manoeuvring runs through our blood and all the way to heaven. It just means we are active in the world as good citizens and we participate in transforming the society of which we belong to one so that it can reflect the city of heaven.
In today’s Gospel, we catch a glimpse of the sad truth of politics, the type which makes people shy away. Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees and the Herodians reflects the saying that politics is “dirty”. In this scenario, the Pharisees simply hate the Romans because they are foreign occupiers. No religious purist wants to be lorded over by pagans or unbelievers. Just like this country where race is such an important marker that it is next to impossible to fathom a person from a minority race ever becoming the PM. Secondly, the Herodians, as their name suggests, are whom people would label as collaborators since Herod was a puppet of the Roman powers. Again, just like this country. A person from the majority race mixing with those of the minority race runs the risk of being labelled as a traitor.
These two groups occupy opposite poles of the political spectrum, one abhorring the Romans and the other complicit in facilitating the foreign occupation of the Holy Land. But because they both wanted to set Jesus up, they were willing to collaborate. The familiar quote that “Politics makes strange bedfellows” rings true here. Ironically though, the Pharisees and the Herodians used the controversial subject matter which divided them in the first place. Regarding taxation, the Pharisees were opposed to it whereas the Herodians were supportive of it. Should one pay taxes or not?
Jesus not only managed to evade their trap but He also exposed the Pharisees hypocrisy by asking for a non-kosher or non-halal instrument of exchange: the currency issued by the authority they dislike. Moreover, the coin provided would have changed hands many times over before reaching the ritually pure Pharisee. It is like touching money that went through the hands of a pork-seller or in our case, or a syariah-compliant government taxing a casino or alcohol sellers.
Politics may be dirty but a remark of St Teresa of Avila is helpful. She said that “Money may be the devil’s excreta but it is certainly a good fertiliser”. Here, Jesus did not condemn money per se but used it as a teaching moment to help us situate where we are in relation to the world and to God. His response cut through the messiness of politics.
We are in the world but not of the world. This is an important distinction. What unites these two worlds is the word holy. All the more we should strenuously be part of the political process in order to sanctify our temporal realm. Called to holiness, we infuse the world with our sanctity. However, being in this world is not a naive accommodation because of its fallen nature. As such we are in the world but not of the world.
Why?
Right after creation, some angels led by Satan and overcame by pride, turned against God. These beings forgot their place in the order of creation and had no desire to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. Satan and his minions have been striving to disrupt created order as they did with Adam and Eve. In the case of the Gospels, even though they are beautiful chronicles of our redemption, they can also be read as accounts of Satan’s attempt to obstruct our salvation. Unwittingly, both Pharisees and Herodians, became pawns of Satan, in their united attempt to trap Jesus.
Christ’s instruction to give to Caesar what belongs to him and to God what belongs to Him prioritises how a Christian is to engage the world. In fact, when Christ referred to the image of the coin, even though, it bore the imprint of Caesar, it was a powerful reminder of Whose image we all have been created under: God’s image. Politics, as in every order of created reality, bears the scourge of fallen nature. However, to run away from politics is not the solution. Instead, our participation in the political process will always be a struggle to sanctify the world so that it can resemble the final destination that we have been invited to.
Can we change the world? Yes, we can and we should. In this endeavour we are in line with the “Globalists” who want to make the world a better place. But we are not globalists because we do not mistake the city of man for the City of God. Whatever we do, we recognise this world for what it is—fallen, redeemed but still a temporal and passing realm. Whereas the other world is eternal. Thus, we do within our power all we can to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to Him.
This ties in with today being Mission Sunday. It is true that preaching to tired believers is infinitely more difficult than to non-believers. Take a look at Europe’s tired Christians on the way to being de-Christianised. In a way our mission in a multi-religious society is cut out for us. Cyrus in the 1st Reading teaches us that God continues to work in the world, no matter how rough the political terrain is or how “dirty” politics comes across to us. It is precisely in such troubled situations that we recognise that the ultimate Saviour is the Lord Himself. Our weekly adoration expresses this recognition. The knowledge that God is always in control gives the Christian his or her encouragement to continue to labour in this world. In the end, while we render to Caesar our due, it is to ultimately to Him that we must render an account of our lives here on earth.
