First Reading • Isaiah 45:1, 4-6
Psalm • Psalm 96:1, 3, 4-5, 7-8, 9-10
Second Reading • 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b
Gospel • Matthew 22:15-21
On May 8, 2025, the eyes of the world were focused on Saint Peter’s Square.
Less than three weeks after the death of Pope Francis, the newly elected Pope Leo XIV stepped onto the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Among his first words were these: “God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail! All of us are in God’s hands.”
Think about where he was standing. Nearly two thousand years earlier, Saint Peter was put to death in Rome under the power of the Roman Empire.
At that time, the emperor seemed powerful and Christianity seemed weak. Christians were persecuted, imprisoned and killed.
Yet today the Roman Empire is history, while the successor of Saint Peter continues to proclaim Jesus Christ from Rome.
Evil will not prevail.
That same message runs through today’s first reading.
The people of Israel had been defeated and taken into exile in Babylon. They had lost their homeland and seemed powerless.
Yet God raised up Cyrus, the king of Persia, to defeat Babylon and allow the Jewish people to return home.
What is surprising is that Cyrus was not even a Jew. He did not worship the God of Israel.
Yet God calls him “my anointed.” God was working through someone who did not even know Him.
And God declares: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.”
That is an important reminder for us today. Sometimes we look at the world and become discouraged.
We see wars, political divisions, violence, attacks on human dignity, problems in our families and uncertainty about the future. We may wonder, “Where is God in all this?”
The answer of Scripture is: God has not abandoned the world.
We may not always understand what He is doing, but God remains Lord of history. Presidents, prime ministers, governments and nations come and go. God remains.
Therefore, Christians should never live in fear.
But trusting God does not mean sitting back and doing nothing.
In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus with a political question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?”
Jesus asks for a coin and says: “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
We often concentrate on the first half of that sentence. But perhaps the more challenging part is the second: What belongs to God?
The coin bears Caesar’s image, so it belongs to Caesar.
But we bear God’s image.
Therefore, we belong to God.
Our whole life belongs to Him; our families, our work, our money, our choices, our conscience, our vote, our relationships and the way we treat other people.
Our faith cannot be something we practise only for an hour on Sunday. We are called to bring the values of the Gospel into the world in which we live.
Pope Leo XIV reminds us in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas that Christians must help build a society in which the dignity of every person is protected, justice is promoted and fraternity becomes possible.
That begins very close to home.
It means recognizing the dignity of the unborn child and the elderly person nearing the end of life. It means respecting the person with a disability, caring for those who are sick, welcoming the lonely, protecting the vulnerable and refusing to treat anyone as disposable.
It also means remembering the poor.
The Gospel asks us to notice the person struggling to pay the bills, the family going through a difficult time, the newcomer trying to build a new life, and the person who feels forgotten.
Politics and public life matter because people matter. But our deepest hope can never be placed in a political party, a government or a leader.
Our hope is in Jesus Christ.
And perhaps this is where today’s Gospel becomes very personal.
We can easily ask, “What does the government owe me? What does society owe me? What do other people owe me?”
Jesus turns the question around:
“What do I owe God?”
Do I give God my time in prayer?
Do I give Him a place in my family?
Do I allow my faith to shape my decisions?
Do I recognize His image in the people I find difficult to love?
Do I use what I have to help someone who has less?
Saint Paul praises the Thessalonians today for their “work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope.”
That is a beautiful description of Christian life: faith that works, love that serves, and hope that does not give up.
The world belongs to God. History belongs to God. And we belong to God.
So, we need not be afraid.
Let us give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. But above all, let us give to God what belongs to God; our hearts, our lives, and our faithful witness to the Gospel.
Then, even in difficult times, we can walk forward with confidence because, as Pope Leo reminded the world:
We are in God’s hands, and evil will not prevail.
