Today’s first reading is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, one of the most challenging and complex of all the New Testament books – and addresses an equally complex character in the person of Abraham. Known for his unwavering faith in God he is a person who is not always righteous and forthright; a person who sometimes acts in ways not in accord with the will of God. Consider some moments in the story of Abraham. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ answer calls into question the basic presupposition behind their question, that there is an essential incompatibility between loyalty to the governing authority and loyalty to God. This was precisely Judas the Galilean’s position as explained by Josephus (War 2.118 and Ant. 18.23): to pay the tax was to tolerate a mortal sovereign in place of God. It was loyalty to God which was the basis for Zealots’ objections to Roman taxation, but Jesus, without reducing the demands of loyalty to God, indicates that political allegiance even to a pagan state is not incompatible with it. This is not a rigid division of life into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’, but rather a recognition that the ‘secular’ finds its proper place within the overriding claim of the ‘sacred’. Continue reading
friarmusings 