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Fourth Sunday
after Pentecost
Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk
21st June 2015
Christ and His
Attitude to All Lawful Authority by Rev. Fr. Sertillanges
Jesus, as the Ideal
and Perfect Man, would not dispense Himself from respecting
authority, and in so far as was compatible with His designs,
He submitted to it. Not that He owed obedience to any man,
but He was the example for all to imitate; and it is
needless to say that in this, as in every other respect, He
set the example for us to follow. As a private individual,
if we may use the term, He obeyed the laws of His nation in
every respect.
Willingly He
submitted to the circumcision, He observed the Sabbath, He
paid the tribute, He frequented the synagogue, He went to
Jerusalem regularly for the appointed feast-days. In His
public actions we find Him equally respectful to authority
on account of the grave consequences to His disciples that
must necessarily follow on His actions.
The Jewish nation
was in a state of turmoil, and profoundly troubled.
Incapable of bearing patiently the Roman yoke, which seemed
to them a profanation, they broke out periodically into
revolts of a fury verging on madness. Riots frequently took
place; they were smothered in streams of blood; but, as is
always the case, bloodshed thus served only to irrigate the
roots of their hatred, and made it grow stronger and more
unquenchable than ever.
The result of this
action was that, instead of quelling the rebels, a sort of
terrible enthusiasm was aroused in their fierce souls, and a
longing for revenge and thirst for the blood of their Roman
rulers. Besides all this public strife, there were internal
dissensions, rivalries of sects, struggles for influence,
jealousies, burning controversies, suspicious plots, and civil
wars among citizens.
If Jesus loved His
country, He must then act in a manner to strengthen the
bonds which, while holding all power outside the authority
of the law, could arm itself for the common good. In times
of trouble and dissensions, when all the energies of the
nation are sapped and exhausted, leaving the people like a
worthless corpse, ready for corruption, then the duty of a
real patriot is plain. He must gather the people round him
and animate them with his spirit of honesty; not quarrel
with them on the pretext of political opposition, nor show
any personal preference. The common safety is in danger, and
the remedy can only come from unity of action; and that
action, in order to be efficacious, must be permeated with a
spirit of submission and obedience.
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