Thursday, November 2 : Saint Lawrence of Brindisi

“Therefore give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” We are to give back to each their due. Now this is a saying that is truly full of wisdom and heavenly understanding because it teaches us that there are two sorts of power, one earthly and human, the other heavenly and divine… It teaches us that we are bound in this way to a twofold form of obedience, one to human laws and the other to divine… We are to pay Caesar with the coin bearing the image and inscription of Caesar and God with what has received the seal and image of the divine likeness: “The light of your countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us” (Ps 4:7 Vg.). We have been created in the image and likeness of God (Gn 1:26). You are a man, O Christian. So you are the money in the divine treasure-chest, a coin bearing the image and inscription of the divine emperor. From now on if I ask with Christ: “Whose image and inscription are these?”, you reply: “God’s”. And I answer: “So why do you not give back to God what is his?” If we truly want to be God’s image then we must resemble Christ, since he is the image of God’s goodness and “the very imprint of his being” (Heb 1:3). And God “predestined those he foreknew to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rm 8,29). Christ truly gave back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. He observed in the most perfect way possible the precepts contained in the two tablets of the divine law “becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). Thus he was adorned in the highest degree with all virtues, both manifest and concealed.

maronite readings – rosary,team