Oct. 19, 2008: 29th Sunday Ordinary Time (A)

The new arrival of a first child is one of the most life-changing experiences for the mom and dad. Their car will now be occupied by an infant car seat, stuffed animals, diaper bag, and Barney CDs. They will begin to wonder about the future. Do we need a bigger house? Do we need to move closer to a good school? Is the neighborhood safe? Should we begin college savings account? Will our child have a job?  

What motivates these parents to ponder about these future questions? The love for the child. Without love, all the sleepless nights wrestling with a fussy infant or sacrificing a third of your income on education do not make sense. Our concern for the child begin in the small confines of our home in the crib, but soon it expands into our neighborhood and our community. We join local PTA, become den mother of Cub Scout, and get involved with youth ministry at our church. Soon as the child matures into a young adult, parents worry about what’s being shown on TV, what they are browsing on the Internet, and what’s being discussed with their friends. In other words, the love for our child propels us to think about the values in which our children are raised in. It’s because we know how important values are that we try to set good example. And we want our children to be raised, especially in Christian values—values that Jesus taught.

I remember when I was in the middle school in Dallas, Texas, I was reminded of the Christian values even when playing football. On the football field, minutes before the game began, our team knelt on one knee and prayed. We didn’t pray that God would give us special grace to pounce on the other team 57-0. We prayed, instead, that when we play the game, we would play fairly, at our best, and we prayed that no one in either team will be injured. Wouldn’t it be nice to have such values and attitude in everything we do? Wouldn’t it be nice, for example, before the bells on the New York Stock Exchange rung to start the morning, every broker and floor traders would pray the following prayer: “Heavenly Father you have entrusted to us hard earned money of the citizens of our nation. Let us not be tempted into vice of selfish greed for a quick gain. Rather, let us be tempered with virtues of prudence and charity to be servants of our nation’s citizens.” Would we have such turmoil in our retirement accounts if our financial workers had such Christian attitude?    

When we look around, we see gradually our Christian values being forcibly removed or forgotten. There is a religion out there called secularism which believes that there is no God and that other belief system should be rejected or ignored. Secularists support the following: 

• The complete separation of church and state.
  
• The banning prayers, cross, crucifixes, monuments of Ten Commandments in schools and public buildings.
  
• Removal of religion and signs of religion from schools
  

We may not have problem with these subtle changes occurring around us. We may even agree with some of the demands of secularists. But let me go back to the image of the love of the parents for the child. It is love that propelled the parents to care about what values the child was raised in. There are two fundamental values we as Christian parents want our child to be raised in: love for God and love for neighbor. When either is removed, there is bound to be vacuum in virtues. When care for God and our neighbor is removed, selfishness sets in and then vice moves in—pride, anger, lust, gluttony, envy, sloth, and greed. Have we seen this in our financial world?

In our gospel, Jesus replies to the Pharisees who attempt to trap him with the question, ‘Tell us, is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?’ And Jesus replies, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” What is Jesus saying here? Is he saying keep our faith private from our public squares? Rather he’s saying be faithful to your civic duties. And at the same time, do not hide your faith; proclaim it. He says to us, be the salt of the earth (Matt 5:13-15); what good is the salt if it loses its taste? He says to us, be the light of the world; who puts a lit lamp under a basket? He says, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49)

Recently Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver Colorado has published a book called, "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life." In the book, Archbishop Chaput encourages Catholics to participate in public life, where faith and politics intersect. Archbishop says, “People who take God seriously will not remain silent about their faith. They’ll act on what they believe, sometimes at the cost of their reputations and careers…for Catholics, the common good can never mean muting themselves in public debate on foundational issues of human dignity. Christian faith is always personal but never private. That is why any notion of tolerance that tries to reduce faith to private idiosyncrasy, or a set of opinions that we can indulge at home but need to be quiet about in public, will always fail.”

Our love for our children and our love for Our Lord Jesus will not allow us to let values of our community, state, and country degenerate into selfish vices. That is why we are not to be silent about our love, our passion, and our values.