Resisting in evil days: sermon on the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
By a Dominican Friar | 16 October 2024
“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Dom Prosper Gueranger, in his commentary on this Sunday’s Mass, tells us that some of the ancient commentators associate this Mass with the times of antichrist. As the liturgical year draws toward its end, they say, so the Church places before the minds of her children the thought of the man of sin, who is destined to arise and to deceive many people toward the end of the world. Now, if God our Father will permit this adversary of Christ to arise at that time and do so much harm, it is not because His charity toward the world will have grown colder, for God is charity, and He cannot change. It is, rather, because the charity of man has grown colder; as Christ foretold in the great prophecy of which we shall soon hear a part, “Because iniquities are multiplied, the charity of many will grow cold.” When there is no longer enough charity on earth to prevent his coming, then the times of the antichrist will arrive.
But since the precise day and year of his coming is not known, the Church wants her children in every age to be alert, and more so, as the time comes closer. So, in the introit of this Sunday’s Mass, she places these words on our lips, “If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark our guilt, Lord who would survive?” The first condition for resisting temptation, especially the cruel or subtle temptations of the last days, is that we are not to have confidence in our own righteousness, but rather, say to God, with thee is propitiation; that is, “With Thee is Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins.”
Then, because we have confidence in Jesus, who is even now interceding for us in His Father’s presence, we have confidence in the prayers of His spouse, the Church. The collect reminds us of the power of these prayers: “O God, our refuge and our strength, be present to the devout prayers of thy Church, thou who art the author of devotion.” We receive a share in these devout prayers, each time that we come to take part in the Mass or the Divine Office, even if from human weakness we may be sometimes somewhat lacking in feelings of devotion. The sacred liturgy, being the official prayer of the Church, has a power much greater than it would if we considered only the personal dispositions of those who take part. But even when Christians come together to pray apart from the sacred liturgy, for example to say a rosary or a litany, they are still praying as members of Christ’s Body, and so again, even when they are tired or distracted, then provided their intention is good, they too have a share in the devout prayers of the Church. And so, after the knowledge of our own weakness, this is the next condition for resisting in evil days, namely, perseverance in prayer.
The offertory verse continues this theme. It is taken from the book of Esther, the Jewish maiden who became the spouse of the Great King. She is going into his presence to petition on behalf of her people, who are threatened with annihilation by Aman, who has great power in the kingdom. Aman is a figure of antichrist, while Esther is a figure of the Church praying to God on behalf of her children. But we too are Esther, whenever we pray for those who are weak in their faith, or for those who, because of their form of life, and perhaps without any fault of their own, are exposed to many temptations. Towards the end of the world, it will become more than ever necessary for Christians to pray not only for themselves but for each other, so that they may receive the grace of perseverance, and be, as St Paul puts it today, without offence on the day of Christ, that is, on the day when He puts an end to all temptations.
Does the gospel also relate to this theme of antichrist? Yes, because it has to do with the power of Caesar — or as people say nowadays, with the power of the state. It is common to all persecutions that they involve the power of the state. So, what do we as Catholics believe about the state, that is, about political or temporal authority?
The first thing to say is that we believe that it comes from God. It doesn’t matter at all what the form of government is, whether it is a hereditary monarchy or a democracy where everyone votes, or some other form of government: no matter how the person comes to power, his authority comes from God. That is why we have a duty to obey the laws, and even to show external marks of honour to those in authority. When St Paul, for example, was being questioned by the Procurator of Judaea, he addresses him with respect as “Most Excellent Festus” (Acts 26:25).
But the second thing to say about temporal power is that it is never absolute. It is, in fact, only God who has absolute authority. Political power is given to certain people by God for a particular purpose, namely, to help us to live together well in this world. The coin that we give to Caesar, which we earn by the works of this life, belongs to him because of what he does to facilitate these works, for example, by restraining wrong-doers. But our life together in this world is a very brief and even unimportant thing when compared to the life which the just will enjoy in the kingdom of God. This means that political power may never be used to promote man’s happiness in this world while closing off the path to heaven. The first Christians were quite willing to pay a coin to Caesar, but they steadfastly refused to offer incense to Caesar. Those who commanded them to offer incense had, in a way, a good purpose in mind, namely, the unity of the empire; but they were putting this earthly goal above something far higher, the honour due to God alone, and so our Christian forebears were willing to suffer every kind of death rather than to burn even one grain of incense to the emperor.
This is what persecution is: someone takes the power which he has received from God, and turns it against the people of God. That is something terrible and unnatural, which is why Holy Scripture, in the Book of Daniel, and again in the Apocalypse, portrays persecutors under the form of fantastic and misshapen beasts. Yet persecution is not always open and obvious, and a persecutor need not always be a cruel person, at least in the normal sense of the word. We read in the book of Maccabees, when the Jews were being forced contrary to the law of Moses to eat the flesh of pigs, that there was a noble scribe called Eleazar, ninety years old, and that some of his powerful friends, “moved,” says Scripture, “with an iniquitous kind of mercy”, told him that they would secretly bring him lawful meat, so that he need only pretend to have eaten pork. Again, during the early Roman persecutions, some Catholics were told that they need not actually offer incense at the altar of Caesar, providing they went to the local imperial office and bought an official certificate which said that they had done so. But the Church refused to accept this compromise, just as the old man Eleazar, after a moment’s reflection, refused to benefit from the trick which his so-called friends had offered to play on his behalf, and died as a martyr instead.
If we need courage to overcome open persecutions, how are we to overcome these more subtle temptations to betray Christ and His word? By simplicity of heart and purity of intention: as our Lord says in the gospel, “If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light” — that is, if your intention is pure, then divine light will shine on all your actions and will show you what is pleasing to God. A firm and unwavering intention to give to God what belong to God: this will enable us to see, when the time come, what does and what does not belong to Caesar.