October 18, 2026 (29 Sunday Ordinary A)

Dear brothers and sisters, Christ's response to the Pharisees in the Gospel of today is, “give back to Cesar what belongs to Cesar and to God what belongs to God.” We see today how society and the state want to have more and more control over each one of our lives. Never before have there been so great forces placed upon us. Society has reached such a level that it has created weapons that can destroy the whole face of the Earth. Also technology and media today have reached a global scale. The technology has the power to know almost everything about anyone collecting millions of data and information every day. The states and governments around the world always have more control over our life, work, money, health, immigration… The response of Jesus Christ in front of this question of who we should put first, if the government and the beliefs of society or God, his answer is God. Christ invites us to restitute to the world what is of this world and restitute to God what belongs to God. Like the coin bears upon itself the image of the emperor we should leave to the world all that is worldly but us and our lives and our soul that bears the mark of Christ, we should give them back to God. Christ shows to us today that before everything else we belong to God. This is the freedom Christ comes to give us that first of all there is God. This freedom the world wants to undermine and take away from us. The truth is that if we are Christians, we resemble Christ and not the world. We carry within ourselves the image of Christ we love like Christ, “God is Love”. This is the image we are called to carry, not the one of any of the emperors of this world. 

Peace,

Fr. Nicholas