The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
A hallmark experience of my pandemic days is the slow, creeping anxiety that accompanies the feeling that I haven’t “done enough” to earn my rest. I often feel like I should be doing something to prove that I deserve the privilege of being able to stay home and work, like finish a manuscript or sew an entire wardrobe by hand. For God to be proud of me, I have to keep working, keep doing, keep producing!
In this Gospel, Jesus cuts right the chase:
“Whose image and whose inscription is on this coin?” he asks of the Roman currency.
“Caesar’s,” the Pharisees reply.
A truth: There is nothing wrong with work. We need to work, and it’s a celebration of our human capabilities and all that’s been granted to us by God. Through our daily work, we give Him glory.
Another truth: Our hearts always long for connection to God and for His love. The rub is that sometimes we think we will find it in boundaryless toil and countless achievements.
The Good News is that God loved us to and beyond infinity before we had a job or advanced in our career. We don’t earn more of His love every time we put in an extra hour at our home offices. We’re as loved as we’re ever going to be and that love is enough for us. God can do amazing, wonderful things with us—show us something we’ve never seen, tell us something we’ve never heard—if we trust that His love is enough and that who we are is enough. He knows that we do our best, and He knows that it’s all we can do. Mercifully, that is all He asks of us.
It’s my prayer that this week we all give ourselves the same compassion Jesus gives to us. May we always remember to glorify our Lord in our work and in our resting. And may His Spirit inspire temperance in us so that we may do both well.
Perpetua Charles works as a book publicist in Boston, Massachusetts. She loves the Lord, TV, Disney princesses, books, Baby Yoda, 90s-00s teen pop, and the color pink. Say hi on Instagram!