Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” These words are mysterious; Jesus doesn’t give us a list of things that belong to Caesar. So how do we interpret these words?
Here’s one way. Just before Jesus delivers this famous line, he asks about the coin, “Whose image and inscription is this?” Each Roman coin bore the image and name of the emperor – that’s how people knew who it belonged to. But we can take this idea further: don’t we ourselves bear the image of God, the imago Dei? And if so, don’t our whole beings belong to God, even more than a coin can “belong” to Caesar? Give Caesar his simple coin then, if he wants it – as for God, he desires that we offer him our entire lives. We belong to Him, after all. Let us pray today for the grace to render unto God our lives, which come from Him and belong to Him.