Monday in the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 12, 2024

Matthew 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.”

The first verse of today’s Gospel Reading tells us that the Lord announced to the Apostles his approaching suffering and Death.  The Evangelist does not tell us whether the Lord explained that this would occur in Jerusalem on this occasion or at some future time, but the grief they showed indicates that they understood what he meant.  The writers of the Gospels, especially St. Matthew, very deliberately included the Lord’s statements about his Death.  Death was seen by ancient people, even among the Jews, as the ultimate disaster, a sign of failure.  The exception to this was the sacrificial or heroic death such as was suffered by someone to gain some end for the common good.  The statements about his Death which the Lord made make it clear that he was making an offering his life.

“the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter.”  The Greek text calls these tax collectors “the takers of the didrachma”.  The didrachma was a Greek denomination of money, meaning “two drachmas”.  This tax money was supposed to go to the maintenance of the Temple and amounted to up to a hundred dollars, as estimated by some scholars (although the value at a given time could have come to half that).  This was not an inconsiderable amount of money for the inhabitants of a fishing village like Capernaum.  In today’s reading, these tax collectors approach Peter and ask him, “Does not your teacher pay the temple tax?”  Their intent in asking this is not merely to determine whether Jesus pays the tax but whether Jesus supports the Temple and the Sanhedrin.  It is a good question since throughout his three years of ministry he is known to have cast out the sellers of animals and money changers from the Temple.  Further, his declaration, “Destroy this Temple and I will rebuild it in three days” (John 2, 19) had been misheard so that he was later charged with intending to destroy it.  Peter, aware of what they were really asking, immediately told them that he did, and at that point he seems to have walked away from them.

Peter does not report the matter to the Lord, perhaps fearing that he would be rebuked for presuming to answer for him.  Jesus brings the matter up in his own way, not to rebuke Peter, but to put his mind at ease.  

“From whom do the kings of the earth take tolls or census tax? From their subjects or from foreigners?”  The Lord’s mentioning “tax” probably made Peter’s heart skip a beat, but he answers quickly: “From foreigners.”  The Lord’s conclusion, “Then the subjects are exempt”, may not have made immediate sense to Peter, but he likely relaxed.  He was not going to be rebuked.  And then the Lord makes it all clear: “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.”  “Them” meaning the tax collectors.  This may sound a little strange to us.  Why put Peter to all that trouble to pay the tax?  Could not the Lord have made the money appear in some other way?  One of the Fathers asks why the tax was not paid out of the bag of common money that Judas kept.  He answers the question by saying that this money was for charity and Jesus would not use it to pay the tax.  The Lord puts Peter to work to pay the tax so that he does contribute something to its paying, for the Lord will pay the tax for them both.  The fact that the didrachma coin is in the fish’s mouth tells us that the Lord regarded the Temple tax with contempt.  To him it was “fish food”.  Not that the Lord despised the Temple, but he knew the corruption of the high priests and the other Temple officials, to whom this money went.  

We see the Lord obeying the law in paying the tax.  He ever obeyed the prescription of the Mosaic Law and even of laws such as this.  It was legitimate to tax the people for the support of the Temple.  But the Lord objected to the corrupt use of the collected tax.  Among other things, this is a lesson in humility for us, that the Lord of heaven and earth would obey human laws.  We should therefore be motivated to obey his divine laws.