Render Unto Caesar

Off of last week's Gospel/Bible Study passage, I found a transcript of an interesting homily on it over at Catholics in the Public Square. You can read it here.

Some quotes I liked:

The Herodians got their tax. Jesus didn’t say not to pay it. It’s Caesar’s image on the coin anyway. But then the Pharisees fail to trap Jesus as well because of the second part of what he said: “Render unto… God what belongs to God.”Out of all creation what uniquely bears the image of God? The human person bears the image of God.

And so because it is God’s image that each human soul bears, each person then has the obligation to give himself or herself back to God. And this higher obligation is a duty to which even Caesar himself is held, whether he believes so or not. Everything that we do then must be in the context of love and service of God. Even the way that we render to Caesar what is Caesar’s should be in harmony with our love and service of God.

I would like to quote Dr. Peter Kreeft, a well-known professor at Boston College , who used a poignant example at a recent talk he gave. “Adolph Hitler gave the people a lot of good things: a sense of self-worth, hope, solidarity, community, optimism, meaningful work, and national pride. He cut unemployment. He was responsible for the autobahns and the Volkswagens. He eliminated starvation, almost all private crime, and most poverty. The people freely elected him and loved him until he started losing military battles. But this egomaniacal tyrant started the world’s worst war and hated, enslaved and murdered six million of God’s Chosen People.”...Hitler denied millions of persons the very right to life, which is the foundation of all other rights, including liberty and the pursuit of happiness.