Dear Friends in Christ,
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus instructs us “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” What does our Lord mean by His instruction?
In these United States, we are used to the legal separation of church and state. Our founding fathers emphasized this arrangement to prevent one church from becoming the “established” church of the land and in a position of power over other Christians who do not belong
to this church or unbelievers. Although this system has its benefits, we cannot adopt this perspective in our personal lives.
In The Word on Fire Bible: The Gospels, Bishop Robert Barron explains it best. Barron writes “We should not read this one-liner (Jesus’ instruction) as though there is a clearly demarcated political realm that belongs to the Caesars of the world and a clearly demarcated spiritual realm that belongs to God. An we certainly shouldn’t read it in the modern mode, that the public arena belongs to politics, while religion is relegated to the private dimension.” Barron goes on to state that “This won’t do …because
God is God…the sheer act of being itself, which necessarily pervades, influences, grounds and has to do with everything.” Therefore, as God is the basis of everything, we cannot leave him out of the public life of our nation.
Jesus’ instruction teaches us that we owe God an integrated life lived in faith, with faith informing both our private choices and public participation and decisions. We cannot artificially separate these two spheres of our lives.
This Sunday, we are gathering at St. Patrick’s Cemetery at 1 PM to pray the Rosary. As we walk through the cemetery, we will be praying for our deceased loved ones, friends and deceased members of St. Peter’s Parish. As the month of November approaches, we are reminded by the Church about the importance of praying for the dead. In this way we exercise charity towards them and assist them in entering into Heaven.
We look forward to praying with you!
In Christ,
Fr. Michael