Hearing The Word

A weekly newsletter delivering context and insight into the Sunday Gospels.

October 18, 2026

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 22:15-21

The Pharisees went off

and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. 

They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying,

"Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man

and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.

And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion,

for you do not regard a person's status.

Tell us, then, what is your opinion:

Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?" 

Knowing their malice, Jesus said,

"Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? 

Show me the coin that pays the census tax." 

Then they handed him the Roman coin. 

He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" 

They replied, "Caesar's."

At that he said to them,

"Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

and to God what belongs to God."

Image is Everything



~Rev. Sean Loomis MA, MDiv

Pastor, Saint Madeline + Ridley Park, PA

At its heart, the Gospel centers around family identity. In his response, Jesus uses the term eikon, meaning "image" or "likeness,” the same word the Septuagint uses to describe our creation from God and a biblical expression to reference sonship.

Thus, Jesus reframes the conversation from taxes to sonship by pointing to creation. But, the creation account ends in a rupture of families: God tells Satan, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring." God's family multiplies through Seth—Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus—by covenants. But Satan's line multiplies too. Cain slew Abel, and his line spread sin until God judged them with the flood; then, Satan’s line continued through Ham, whose descendants perpetuated enmity with God’s family (Israel) — Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, Philistia. By situating the conversation into this context, Jesus prompts the Pharisees' disciples and Herodians to consider whose line they carry. Here, the Gospel holds the clues.

Adversaries themselves, their collaboration stresses the depth of their hatred for God’s Son and thus reflects the enmity of the garden. Like Satan in the garden with Adam and Eve, they tempt (peirazete) Jesus with a trap carrying the penalty of death, because defying Rome's tax could mean sedition. This term links them to Satan whom Jesus and Paul call “the tempter” (peirazōn). Underscoring this connection, Jesus notes their ponērian (malice) – the same root word Jesus uses to call Satan "the evil one" (ponērou).

Every family leads to an inheritance – God’s to eternal life and Satan’s to eternal damnation. Jesus’ response then, is a call to conversion, pivoting on “render.” God’s children do (render) the will of their Father; his enemies do the will of their father, the devil. Repent, he’s saying, and render to God what belongs to God.

Recieving and Responding to God's Invitation

~Stan Sienkiewicz

Saint Albert the Great Church + Huntingdon Valley, PA

The Pharisees thought they had Jesus trapped. The issue was the census tax, paid in a Roman denarius. Its image of Tiberius and an inscription calling him the son of the divine Augustus of-fended devout Jews. If He said to pay, the people would see Him as a collaborator. If He said not to pay, Rome could charge Him with sedition. Instead, He asked whose image was on the coin. Cæsar’s image meant the coin could go back to Cæsar. The question left hanging is: What bears God’s image? Genesis gives the answer on its first page: we do.

In the first reading, Isaiah tells how the Lord speaks to Cyrus, a pagan king, calling him “his anointed,” the one “whose right hand I grasp.” The Lord tells him, “I have called you by name, giving you a title, though you do not know me.” If God claims even a king who never knew Him, how much more does He claim us, made in His image?

I sometimes feel a deeper tug-of-war, as though my work, bills, and chores compete with God for my time. St. Francis de Sales gently disagrees. In the Introduction to the Devout Life, he writes that “true devotion does us no harm whatsoever, but instead perfects all things.” Devotion, he says, “must be exercised in different ways by the gentleman, the worker, the servant, the prince, the widow, the young girl, and the married woman.” We pay our taxes, keep our commitments, and care for those in our charge. When done in love, even ordinary acts become a return to God.

So, I ask myself: How am I reflecting God in my daily life? I am retired. My days are filled with ordinary tasks and caring for my wife. Do I meet those hours with patience, or just get through them? On clear nights I look up at a sky that bears its Maker’s mark. Do the people closest to me see that mark in me?

The early Christian writer Tertullian put it plainly: render “to Cæsar indeed money, to God your-self.” Let us give God what bears His image. Vive Jésus!