Two great civil powers, who, though politically divided, come together in order to try to trap Jesus. For, if He says to pay the tax, then the Jewish people, who felt they did not owe taxes, would reject Him, however, if He says don’t pay the tax than the Herodians, who are kept in power by the Roman Empire will simply have Jesus executed. That is why Jesus utters one of His most famous lines “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

Incidentally, when the Pharisees present a Roman coin they indict themselves by showing that they already pay the tax they don’t think they have to pay.

What’s more is that on the coin is the inscription “Tiberius Caesar, August son of the divine Augustus,” which, in so many words means that he sees himself as a god.

However, Jesus puts things in perspective showing that this is not about political or religious authority, rather, even Caesar who thinks he is a god himself belongs to God.

For, as much as the world will have us believe that there is a secular society and a religious society, God is greater than both and supersedes that power. In fact, St. Josemaria Escriva, puts it well, he says: “Have you ever stopped to think how absurd it is to leave one's Catholicism aside on entering a university, a professional association, a cultural society, or Parliament, like a man leaving his hat at the door?”

Yet, that is what is happening more and more, we, as Christians, as Catholics are being made a minority, slowly having our rights removed, slowly told that we cannot hold our beliefs and if we do then we suffer the consequences, whether they be financial, personal, emotional, psychological or even the threat of death itself.

We need only look at what is going on throughout the world, where people are being executed, beheaded, and shot in cold blood because they unabashedly profess their Christian faith.

In fact, it is said that in 2013 the amount of those who gave their lives for the faith, the amount of martyrs doubled from the year before. And Pope Francis has said that “There are more witnesses, more martyrs in the Church today than there were in the first centuries,” and he said that this past August.

That is why our faith has to be so important, because if it is not, than what we do here, what we say, what we believe, means nothing. We have to be willing to live as a Christian, to follow God’s laws, in the midst of all the others, we have to be strong, we have to be courageous and we have to be unafraid to live our faith.

Because, whether we like to think about it or not, we are seeing what those early Christians had to endure, when their government no longer protected them but sought to silence them, when their government passed laws that would take away their religious freedom and liberty when what belonged to God was no longer claimed as their own.  

When Christians were marched into an amphitheater, before a crowd of countless thousands, and then had animals unleashed upon them, if that didn’t do it, they were crucified, if they still survived, they were burned at the stake. This was known as the pagan theater, and the entertainment was to watch Christians die.

Sometimes, we need to understand where we came from in order to understand what is at risk. Which is why within the world, no matter what, we must always be a Christian first, accepting that challenge, a challenge even more real and more dire today, but one that shows how serious our faith should be.

So that, when we render to God what is His, we will realize, we are rendering everything, because everything, indeed, is His, the state, the government, the nation, the laws the universe, and every last person within it. 

That is why we are called to always remain steadfast as Christian citizens, to be, as one priest puts it: “children of God in the halls of government as well as in the living-rooms of our friends.”

For, by doing so, as Jesus taught us, we will, ultimately, know the importance of giving to “Caesar what belongs to Caesar” and, indeed, to God what belongs to Him.