Good morning every one. I am so happy to welcome you all for today’s celebration. My special welcome to all our parishioners, visitors and every one who is here today, I would also thank you all to celebrate today’s Holy Mass. Dear friends, every time we come to church, we celebrate our belonging to God Almighty, every time we come to church we celebrate the revelation of God Almighty in Jesus Christ and every time we come to church we celebrate our image and likeness of God in Christ.
Once a little boy wrote a letter to God that was forwarded to Ottawa and the prime minister was happy to read it and then He asked the people to send ten dollars to the boy. When the boy got the ten dollars, he was so happy. Then he wrote a thank you note to God saying, “God, I am so happy that you sent ten dollars but by the way I noticed that you sent the money through Ottawa and as usual they kept most of it.
In today’s gospel, a group of Pharisees and Scribes come to Jesus and ask, “whether they should pay taxes or not?” They wanted to put Jesus in trouble and they wanted to trap Him from His answers. But Christ our Lord says, “Render unto Caesar what belongs to him and unto God what belongs to Him”.
When Jesus asked the people whose image is on the coin and whose inscription is there, they said, “Creaser’s” then He said to give that belonged to Caesar and then He added saying, “Render unto God what belongs to Him”
The question today is what belongs to God. Whose image and likeness we carry? If we are created in the image and likeness of God, then we have to give ourselves to God alone.
Once a real incident happened in one of the South American counties where people grow banana. By exporting banana, they make their living. Once the ships that carry their bananas to different countries came late, instead of coming on Wednesday, they came on Saturday evening. So people were so busy loading them in ships except one man. When people asked him why. He said “ tomorrow is Sunday and I want to go to church not loading bananas’. People were laughing at him saying, “If you do not do it now, you are going to lose more than fifty thousand dollars. You will become so poor. The ships are leaving by tomorrow. And he instead of harvesting bananas went to church that Sunday. When he came home, he noticed all ships left the port except one because it had some mechanical problem. When the ship was ready to leave, they didn’t want to go empty handed, so they went to that man whose banana was not sold yet and said to him, “we would like to pay you three times more and please give your bananas”. He made more money that year than any one else because he respected the image and likeness of God in him. He loved God and practiced his faith.
Jesus our Lord says we should give to God what belongs to Him. Yes we belong to Him and when we give him, we will find things different.
There is a story about a man who went to parish in France where he bought rather inexpensive necklace and when he came back to his country, he wanted to find out the value of the necklace and took it to a jeweler and asked the price, the jeweler put it under the magnifying glass and examined and said, “$ 50,000 thousand dollars. The man was so surprised to know the price and he took it to another jeweler and asked the same question, the man too put the necklace under a magnifying glass and studied and said, “about $100,000dollars. The man then looked at the jeweler and asked why is it so this much… the man then asked him to read what was written in the necklace that said, “To Josephine from Napoleon”. The value of the necklace came from its identification with the famous person. Likewise our value and dignity come from Christ our Lord. When we are with God, we will be valued so high.
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