22nd Sunday after Pentecost
“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt. 22:21).
Father John Hunwicke recently wrote about the spirit of the age and the attempt to to set up a rival to Christ the King. One of the greatest threats to our living as authentic Christians is the temptation to conform to the spirit of the age, the spirit of the world, and it has deceived many Christians into thinking life would be better and the world more accepting of them if they compromised with sin.
This has been a temptation since the very beginning. Christians were once required to worship the Roman emperor as a god and to offer a pinch of incense before his image. If they did so, they would live, if not, they would be killed. How easy it seemed, and many compromised.
St. Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, did not. He said, “Eighty and six years I have served Him and He has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King and Savior? You threaten me with a fire that burns for a season, and after a little while is quenched; but you are ignorant of the fire of everlasting punishment that is prepared for the wicked.”
During the Protestant Reformation in England, King Henry VIII demanded that the bishops accept him as the Supreme Head of the English Church. The king then had parliament pass the Succession Act, declaring his first marriage to Catherine invalid and recognizing Elizabeth as his heir. Apart from St. John Fisher, the bishops caved and saved their necks, while St. John Fisher had his sliced through with an ax.
The totalitarian spirit of our age calls on us to accept the culture of death, unbridled passions, the degradation of the family, and the blessing of sin by the Church. There are even bishops, notably those of Belgium, whose actions imply the world will warmly embrace us if we just compromise, if we just offer a pinch of incense before the image of Caesar.
This is the tyranny of every age which seeks to dethrone Christ the King and destroy the Catholic Church.
St. Anthony the Abbot writes, “Men will surrender to the spirit of the age. They will say that if they had lived in our day, faith would be simple and easy. But in their day, they will say, things are complex; the Church must be brought up to date and made meaningful to the day’s problems. When the Church and the world are one, then those days are at hand because our Divine Master placed a barrier between His things and the things of the world. A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’”
Christ assures us He will be with the faithful all days, even to the consummation of the world; therefore, we must not fear. Our confidence is in the Lord Who offers us the grace to stand firm and reach the heights of perfection. St. Paul writes, “… the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from evil” (2 Thess. 3:3).