+(Intro) Our first reading this morning speaks of awaiting new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. We are to be eager to be found without spot or blemish before God. So let us take a moment to be mindful of our sins and failings.
(After the gospel) Pharisees and Herodians were sent to Jesus to ensnare him. As the commentary in Give Us This Day points out, they attempt to expose Jesus “as a political revolutionary or a compromised prophet, but they only set their own trap… Jesus calmly responds with a remarkable request. He asks for a denarius…By asking about the coin’s image, Jesus turns the question from what they possess to who possesses them, showing that what we own can own us.”
The question of Jesus is one that is as relevant today as it was in his own time. As Christians we are continually being asked to repay to God what belongs to God which is the whole of our lives. In this Eucharist we are receiving an unfathomable act of love so let us ask for the grace to respond with the whole of our lives, to render to God what belongs to God who has made us his very own.
2 Pet 3:12-15a,17-18; Mark 12:13-17