TO WHOM OR TO WHAT DO I BELONG
“I am the LORD and there is no other. . . . It is I who arm you,
though you know me not, so that . . . people may know that there is none besides me.
I am the LORD, there is no other.” Isaiah 45:5-6
Isaiah here reminds us that God is the One who has “armed” us, whether we “know God” or not. And God’s purpose in doing so is that, through us, others “may know that there is no other” besides God.
The Gospel has the Pharisees askng Jesus for a “ruling” on a question they use to “entrap” Him. His answer avoids taking sides about the lawfulness of the tax; instead, Jesus focuses on the bigger picture: “the things that are God’s.”
“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s;
give to God the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21
And exactly what are “the things that are God’s”? Ponder that for a while, especially in the light of who and what want to “entrap” us.
MY LONG-RANGE PLAN
Each of us knows that some day we will come to the end of our life and, when that time comes, whether it happens in an instant or gradually, we will find that every one of the things that we let ourselves grow to love more than we love God, will no longer be available to us – our ability to drive a car, use our cellphone, see and effectively communicate with those we love, etc. All of that will be gone and we will be alone with God. A friend or a stranger? That depends upon whether or not we choose to focus on the bigger picture: “the things that are God’s.” So, let’s start now, if we have not already begun, to “give to God the things that are God’s” – like ourselves, and our attentiveness to the things of God.
Confessions of Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine, one of the greatest Fathers of the Church, struggled with this. Ponder his description which may take some time to comprehend. Take the time. You won’t be sorry.
“And I turned to myself and said: “And you, who are you?” and I answered: “A man.” Now clearly there is a body and soul in me, one exterior, one interior. For which of these two should I have enquired of my God? I had already saw him by my body, from earth to heaven, as far as my eye could send its beams on the quest. But the interior part is the better, seeing that all my body’s messengers delivered to it, as ruler and judge, the answers that heavens and earth and all things in them made when they said: “We are not God,” and, “He made us.” The inner man knows these things through the ministry of the outer man: I the inner man knew them, I, I the soul, through the senses of the body. I asked the whole frame of the universe about my God and it answered me: “I am not He, but He made me.” The Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 10, Chapter VI, Translated by F.J.Sheed.
THOSE BACKGROUND PRAY-ERS AND those LONGING FOR YOU TO SEE THAT YOU ARE GOD’S
Augustine’s wise and loving mother, St. Monica, prayed for her son all through his years of exploring the things that were and were not God’s. Who are the St. Monicas in your life, the ones who long for you to be able, like Augustine to write:
“Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! For behold Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou were with me and I was not with Thee. I was kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness: and Thou didst send forth Thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: Thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and now I pant for Thee: I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace.” Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book 10, Chapter XXVII, Translated by F.J.Sheed
Sister Loretta
Lives of the Saints: