GIVING BACK TO GOD


TUESDAY, NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME   

2 Pet 3:11-15,17-18; Ps 90:2-4,10,14,16; Mk 12:13-17

Giving to God what belongs to Him

The image of God, who is a Trinity of Persons, is a gift to us. As we noted yesterday, we share in the Trinitarian nature of God, for He created us in His image. As we have previously reflected, our redemption involves making us like God in our daily lives. To be like God is to be like the Trinity. Hence, we have concluded that our salvation and glorification consist in sharing the Trinitarian community. In yesterday’s reading from the weekday, Saint Peter informed us that we have been given the divine nature as a gift to help us overcome the corruptive influence of the world. We receive and appropriate the gift of divine nature to the extent we let go of our corrupted human nature and its sinful desires. Without dying with the Son of Man, we cannot live with him through the Holy Spirit he sends to give us new spiritual life. This is the lesson the Son of God came to teach us, coming into our nature. He set us free from the bondage of evil through his atonement for our sins. Redeemed, he enables us to offer ourselves to the Father of all spirits who gives us every perfect gift. Our giving to God would only be a response to his numerous gifts to us. The community of divine Persons gives us individually and collectively, inviting us to enter the communion of joy and happiness through self-giving.

Saint Peter, therefore, urges us to commence learning the divine lifestyle here, while we wait for the completion of our sanctification, guided by the Holy Spirit. “You should be living holy and saintly lives while you wait and long for the Day of God to come, when the sky will dissolve in flames and the elements melt in the heat.” With this understanding, our Christian life becomes a continuous transformation to Jesus Christ. Each of us ought to desire and intend this transformation, for it is not an automatic process, but a cooperative process. God the Father, through His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, illuminates our minds and inflames our hearts daily. We must receive the illumination and let our hearts be set aflame with divine love. to give ourselves in love to God and to others. To entertain the hope of entering the Trinitarian communion, we must cooperate with God in this purification process of daily living. This is the demand Peter made of us. “So then, my friends, while you are waiting, do your best to live lives without spot or stain so that he will find you at peace. Think of our Lord’s patience as your opportunity to be saved.” The Lord’s patience in training us is to let the spiritual man germinate from the earthly man for the eternal communion we have started here.

Living through faith means rejecting what is temporal for what is eternal; not following the world and its sensible attractions, but following the word of God. When the man of dust returns to dust, the spiritual man endures with the life of Christ that is imperishable. “You turn men back to dust and say: ‘Go back, sons of men.’ To your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday, come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.” Our Lord, in the Gospel, made us understand that not all that is in us is meant for the dust; something within us is meant for God. “They handed him one (denarius) and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?’ ‘Caesar’s’ they told him. Jesus said to them, ‘Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar—and to God what belongs to God.’ This reply took them completely by surprise.” Wisdom that comes from God means using our temporal goods to purchase eternal goods. But the eternal goods are inestimable and never within our purchasing power. God has given them to us gratuitously for our enjoyment. What he wants from us is to give ourselves back to him in gratitude for all the heavenly gifts we have received.

Let us pray: O God, whose providence never fails in its design, keep from us, we humbly beseech you, all that might harm us and grant all that works for our good. Through our Lord Jesus, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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