Today's readings: Isaiah 45, 1. 4-6; Thessalonians 1, 1-5; Matthew 22, 15-21.
Religion and politics have always been and still are a bone of contention. From Jesus' time, through the Constantinian peace, through the birth of the modern state and the tempests of modernity, politics were never safe waters for the Church.
In the wake of secularisation and the separation between Church and State, we've reached points of no return in our understanding of the world around us where the autonomy of politics vis-à-vis religion and the Church is concerned. We should never dream of reversing history.
Jesus' concluding words in today's Gospel, "Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God" have always served as basis for a doctrine of Church and State. When Jesus pronounced them, he was responding to two radical presumptions: one represented by the Romans and the Herodians who claimed all power belonged to Caesar, and another by Israel's theocrats, who claimed that all power belongs to God without acknowledging the autonomy of political power.
It took time for the Church and civil society to go beyond these extremes and strike a final balance. As Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput recently wrote, "History is a great teacher, and one of its lessons is that when religion and the State mingle too intimately, bad things can happen to both."
The separation between Church and State is at times interpreted by many to mean that religion and faith have nothing to do with public life. We are led to believe that a fully secularised public life would be our society's adulthood; a place where mature citizens and leaders could put aside private obsessions to choose the best course for the widest public.
But at a time when it seems it is not faith but secularisation itself that is in crisis, and when both the Church and politics seem to be undergoing their hardest of trials, we need wisdom and discernment not to repeat past mistakes.
Christian faith is always personal but never private. The Gospel of Jesus Christ in our situations needs a very different reading from the days when it was simply watered down to a hybrid of spiritualism and devotion. Jesus actually did politics. At times, we tend to forget that Jesus was given the death penalty for both religious and political motivations. The Church also is bound to do politics.
The temptation to bank on political structures and support has always been there and many a time we gave in to it, not trusting so much that the Church is in the power of the Spirit. We cannot pretend to do in God's name what is alien to God Himself. As we read from Isaiah today, there were moments when God liberated his people not through their spiritual leaders but in spite of them. Cyrus was a sort of pagan Messaih, yet God anointed him: "Though you do not know me, I arm you (so) that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that, apart from me, all is nothing".
We need to keep these words in mind. At times we seem to take for granted that what we say and do is in God's name. As long as we continue to judge society as pagan or secularised or even anti-Church, fear will be the attitude that leads the way. And we forget that there are times when God uses the Church to change politics and times when God uses politics to renew his Church.
In his recent visit to France, Pope Benedict said: "At this moment in history it is fundamental to become more aware of the irreplaceable role of religion for the formation of consciences and the contribution which it can bring to the creation of a basic ethical consensus in society". This longed-for consensus situates the Church at the heart of the world, equipped more with discernment and understanding rather than with judgment.