Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Whose Image Do You Bear?

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, picture a small silver coin resting in the palm of your hand. It is worn smooth from passing through countless hands, but you can still make out a face stamped into the metal, and around the edge, a few words announcing to whom it belongs. In today's Gospel, that little coin becomes the center of one of the most famous conversations Jesus ever had.

The setting is tense. The Pharisees and the Herodians, two groups who normally could not stand each other, have joined forces to trap Jesus. They begin with flattery: "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth." Then they spring the trap: "Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"

It seemed like a question with no safe answer. If Jesus said yes, He would look like a collaborator with the hated Roman occupiers, and the crowds would turn against Him. If He said no, the Herodians would report Him to the Romans as a rebel. Either way, they thought, He was finished.

But Jesus asks them to show Him the coin. Notice that they produce one right there, in the Temple precincts, a coin bearing the image of the emperor and an inscription calling him the son of a god. Then Jesus asks a simple question: "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" They answer, "Caesar's." And He replies with words that still echo two thousand years later: "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

My friends, it is easy to hear this as a clever escape, or simply as a lesson about the relationship between Church and state. It is certainly that. The Catechism teaches that Christians are called to be good citizens, to pay their taxes, to vote, and to contribute to the common good of society. Saint Paul himself urged believers to respect legitimate authority. Our faith is not an escape from public life; it is a call to serve within it.

Our first reading makes this point in a surprising way. Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia, His "anointed." Cyrus did not know the God of Israel. Yet God used him to free the exiled Jewish people and send them home to rebuild Jerusalem. "I have called you by your name," the Lord says, "though you knew me not." And then comes the key line: "I am the Lord, there is no other."

Do you see the connection? Even the most powerful emperors of the world are not ultimate. Caesar may have his coins, Cyrus may have his armies, but they are all instruments in the hands of the one true God. Earthly authority is real, and we owe it respect, but it is never the final word. There is only One to whom we belong completely.

And this is where the Gospel goes deeper than a lesson in civics. Jesus asked, "Whose image is this?" The coin belonged to Caesar because it bore Caesar's image. So the question naturally follows: what bears the image of God?

The answer is found on the very first page of the Bible: "God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them." You and I bear the image of God. Every person in this church, every person you will meet this week, has been stamped, so to speak, with the likeness of the Creator.

The early Church saw this immediately. Tertullian, writing around the year 200, put it beautifully: give the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and give the image of God, which is on the human person, to God. Saint Augustine said much the same thing when he taught that just as Caesar seeks his image on his coins, so God seeks His image in us. Caesar wants his coin back. God wants us back.

Dear friends, that changes everything. Jesus is not dividing life into two neat compartments, a little bit for the government and a little bit for God. Caesar gets a coin. God gets the whole person. The coin can be handed over and forgotten. But we are asked to give ourselves, our hearts, our time, our relationships, our work, our very lives, to the One whose image we carry.

Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on this Gospel, reminded us that the Christian's first loyalty is to God, and that this loyalty is precisely what allows us to serve the world with true freedom. When we know we belong to God, we do not need to worship money, power, success, or the approval of others. Those things become what they really are: coins, useful perhaps, but not worth our souls.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Many of us do give God something. An hour on Sunday. A prayer before meals. A check in the collection basket. These are good and important. But Jesus invites us to ask a harder question: have I given God what is truly His, namely, myself? Or have I given Him a small coin while keeping the rest of my life under someone else's name?

Sometimes the image of God in us gets tarnished. Sin, selfishness, bitterness, and fear can cover it like grime on an old coin. But the image is never erased. Through Baptism, God claimed us as His own. Through the sacrament of Reconciliation, He polishes that image again, restoring what was dulled. God never gives up on reclaiming what belongs to Him.

And because every person bears that same image, how we treat others is part of how we render to God what is God's. The coworker who annoys us, the stranger who is poor, the unborn child, the elderly neighbor who is forgotten, each of them bears the face of God. To honor them is to honor Him.

Saint Paul's letter to the Thessalonians shows us what this looks like in real life. He thanks God for their "work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope." These were ordinary people in a pagan city, surrounded by idols and imperial power. Yet they had given themselves to the Lord, and Paul says the Gospel came to them "not in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit." Their faith was not a private hobby. It shaped how they worked, how they loved, and how they endured hardship.

Brothers and sisters, that same power is offered to us. We do not belong to God by our own effort alone. We belong to Him because He first loved us, created us, and redeemed us at the price of His Son's blood. On the Cross, Jesus gave everything to the Father, holding nothing back. He rendered to God what was God's perfectly, on our behalf.

In a few moments, at this altar, that perfect self-offering will be made present once again. As the bread and wine are brought forward, we are invited to place ourselves on that altar too, spiritually, along with the gifts. And then, in Holy Communion, Christ gives Himself completely to us, so that His image might shine more brightly in us. The Eucharist is where we learn, week after week, how to give ourselves wholly to God.

So here is a simple step for this week. Each morning, before you check your phone or begin your work, take a moment to say: "Lord, I belong to You. Today I give You myself." And when you meet someone, even someone difficult, quietly remind yourself: this person bears God's image too.

Caesar may get his coin. But you, dear friends, are stamped with the image of the living God. Give yourself back to Him, joyfully and completely, for there is no other. Amen.