Column: Whose Image and Inscription?

I was looking through my journal the other day and ran across this reflection from June 5. It seems to me it might be appropriate to share, especially as the presidential election season reaches fever pitch.

When questioned regarding paying taxes to Jesus calls for a denarius, then asks whose image and inscription appear on the coin. The answer is Caesar, and He says, “Pay unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

If the coin belongs to the emperor, then what belongs to God? What bears His image and inscription?

We do.

Genesis 1:26-27 says:

Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

And in Deuteronomy 30:11-14, it is written:

For this command which I am giving you today is not too wondrous or remote for you. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who will go up to the heavens to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?” Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?” No, it is something very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, to do it.

It goes farther: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says, “It is in Christ, ‘the image of the invisible God,’ that man has been created ‘in the image and likeness’ of the Creator” (CCC 1701). Jesus is the very image of God with whom we are stamped, like Caesar on the coin.

And the beginning of St. John’s gospel proclaims Jesus as the Word of God, who is God and through whom all of creation came into being—the Word with which we are engraved.
It is God’s own image and inscription we bear, and do we not owe Him? The One who created us, enlivens us, forgives and redeems us?

In this Election Year and always, may we render unto God alone what belongs to Him—our very selves. Amen!