• October 18, 2026, Today’s Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET
• The Audio Podcast of this Rosary is Available Here Now!
Friends of the Rosary,
As we read this Sunday (Matthew 22:15-21), the twenty-ninth in ordinary time, almost at the end of the liturgical year, Christ the Lord responded to the Pharisees and the Herodians who plotted how they could arrest Him:
“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.”
Christ’s response to the false dilemma posed by the Pharisees reveals that we must give to God what belongs to God — that is, our very lives — while we follow God’s plan for man on earth, which is to live in society with fellowmen and state rulers.
As a partly spiritual being, man is destined to be a citizen of a spiritual, eternal kingdom, and while on this earth, he has the duty and the opportunity to prepare himself for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.
The effects of original sin confuse us and prompt us to withhold some part of ourselves from God. But Saint Paul reminds us: “You were chosen by God our Father.”
And the Lord said: “I have called you by your name, though you knew me not. I am the Lord, and there is no other.”
The one to whom we owe everything is not an authoritarian ruler, but our Creator who unconditionally loves each and every one of us.
Ave Maria!
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
To Jesus through Mary!
Here I am, Lord; I come to do Your will.
Please give us the grace to respond with joy!
+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New York
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