As Jesus and his disciples were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them,
“The Son of Man is to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and he
will be raised on the third day.” And they were overwhelmed with grief.
When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached
Peter and said, “Does not your teacher pay the temple tax?” “Yes,” he said.
When he came into the house, before he had time to speak, Jesus asked him,
“What is your opinion, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take tolls or
census tax? From their subjects or from foreigners?” When he said, “From
foreigners,” Jesus said to him, “Then the subjects are exempt. But that we may
not offend them, go to the sea, drop in a hook, and take the first fish that
comes up. Open its mouth and you will find a coin worth twice the temple tax.
Give that to them for me and for you.”
+ + + + + +
Reflection:
To pay or not to pay the temple tax, of course Jesus did right when He
decided to pay. What if Jesus decided not to pay the temple tax? He would have
been a bad example to His followers and He would have given His opponents a
window of opportunity to persecute Him earlier than expected.
For Jesus to do right is always His top priority to do wrong is
never in His mind it’s always to do whatever is good and right. And we must
always do good and do right also all the time.
Although we are not required to give a certain percentage of our income
to the church. In hindsight this gospel invites us also to examine our
generosity toward our church, how generous are we in giving to our church? For
example, during Holy Mass, how generous are we during offertory? Do we give from
the heart or we give out from our spare or crumbs?
We must give generously for whatever we give generously to the church the
Good Lord will give back to us a hundredfold. We can never out give God
for the more that we give Him the more that we would receive from Him. – Marino
J. Dasmarinas
No comments:
Post a Comment