Gospel MT 17:22-27
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:
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.
“Son of Man” is how Jesus most often referred to Himself. To some, it is a puzzling term.
Although Jesus was and always has been the Son of God, it was important to Jesus that people understand that having been born of a woman He was also fully human.
Most Jews in Jesus’ time would also recognize the term “Son of Man” as it is written in the book of Daniel (7:13-14) some 600 years before Jesus’ birth.
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man….”
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.”
The tax was for the support of the temple, the house God.
Jesus, being the Son of God, clearly was not subject to the Temple tax.
However, so “that we may not offend them” and to set a proper example for others, He told Peter…..”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.”
As a teenager I would go to my mother and ask her for money. Her reply would often be: “Money doesn’t grow on trees. Go out and mow someone’s lawn.”
Jesus wasnt implying that money would magically appear from the mouth of a fish. Most likely, like my mother, Jesus was using an “idiom of the day” to tell Peter to go back to his trade of being a fisherman to earn money to pay the temple tax.
Like any parent, God wants His children to grow in self reliance.
God does not perform miracles when something can be accomplished by our own human effort.
“Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you.” Attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola