The Pharisees are at it again in this week’s Gospel reading. This time, they asked Jesus if it was against God’s law to pay the census tax to Caesar. Once again, they tried to trick Jesus into betraying Himself. But Jesus always sees the truth. He is the truth (John 14:6). Jesus asked them to show Him the coin to pay the tax and asked, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” (Matthew 22: 20). The question He was really asking is: Who does this coin belong to? When they answered that Caesar was on the coin, Jesus famously answered, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Matthew 22: 21).
What belonged to Caesar? A coin, a pittance. What then belongs to God? The answer is everything! The Catechism states, “God created the universe and keeps it in existence by his Word, the Son ‘upholding the universe by his word of power’ (Heb 1:3), and by his Creator Spirit, the giver of life” (CCC 320). The whole world was made by God the Father, through Christ, by the working of the Holy Spirit: “All things came to be through him [Christ], and without him nothing came to be” (John 1:3).
Most especially, we belong to God. We belong to the Trinity. We belong to God our Father as His beloved children: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God” (1 John 3:1). We belong to Christ because He bought our salvation with His own blood (1 Corinthians 6:20). We belong to the Holy Spirit because His breath is our breath of life (Genesis 2:7).
What then does this mean for us spiritually? It means we must repay to God what belongs to Him: our very lives. We are called to offer ourselves in thanksgiving by loving Him “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” and loving “your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37). Consider what this last verse means to you in this moment. What is God calling you to offer back to Him?