Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. We’ve heard that before, and we accept it, I think most of us, but there are definitely some of us who might struggle with that, the fact that we owe something to God. Render to God what belongs to God. We don’t like the sense that God puts an imposition on us and we have to curtail our freedom to give something to God. This is a notion that has really come about in the last 200 years. Let me give you just kind of a quick intellectual history tour here. There was a movement in philosophy basically called rationalism, which said that the only thing that’s real is basically what you in your mind can conceive and what is good for you and what leads to your fulfillment. That’s the only thing that’s real. What you conceive in your mind, what you think, and basically what leads to your fulfillment. So, anything that’s outside of you is either not real, and especially if it doesn’t lead to your fulfillment, then it’s certainly not real. Now, that might not make sense, but the way it kind of attacks religion is, as Christians, as people who are religious, we accept things outside of ourselves, not just what we conceive in our mind. This is the whole notion of Revelation. That there’s like a Trinity that we couldn’t have conceived of, or that Jesus is present in the Eucharist; we couldn’t have made that up. So, the Catholic Church has what are called Dogmas, and we believe that Dogmas, whether it’s the Incarnation of the Son of God, or the Immaculate Conception of Mary, or the bread and wine being the Body and Blood of Jesus, or the nature of the Church, these things exist in reality. They’re true, they’re outside of us, and it’s for us to assent to them, to ascribe to them, if that makes sense. Okay? Versus, again, just whatever we want and whatever is good for us, and if it’s not good for us, then we just kind of throw that Dogma away. Now, what’s tricky about rationalism and how it undermines, I would say, Dogmatic religion, which is very much what Catholicism is based on, is that it waters down the Faith. So, then all of a sudden Faith is just about basically feeling good and feeling God. Which is good. We want to feel good, and we want to feel God; we want to experience God; we want to experience, like, the sublime and the transcendent. But after a while that kind of gets old, and it waters down the Faith, and eventually we just sort of walk away from it. Like, you can only eat so many good steaks for dinner and feel good. You can only watch so many, I don’t know, Cubs games, or see so many good movies, or listen to so much music. After a while it just sort of gets old. If there’s nothing more than just the feeling, the aesthetic aspect of it, then it goes away. All right? So with our Catholic Faith, yes, there are Dogmas, and sometimes they’re very difficult for us to ascribe to, especially when it comes to, like, moral Dogmas and whatnot. But ultimately it keeps us in line. And as we go in line, we keep journeying towards God, we come to an appreciation of these truths, and our hearts are opened up or broken open to them, and we live in a greater way. Okay? So anyways, back to the Gospel real quick. Render to God what belongs to God. This is Jesus basically saying, “Look, I want you to be happy and fulfilled in life, but also recognize that there’s something greater outside of yourself. It’s not just you feeling good or you thinking whatever you want to think, but there’s something that the Church has to offer.” And if we can humble ourselves and see that and assent to it, then we really will live a fulfilled life in God. Amen.