Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Asked a trick question about paying taxes to Rome, Jesus asks to see a coin and points out whose face is stamped on it. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, he says, and to God what is God's. Nobody walks away with the argument they came for.

A long life gives a person plenty of experience with what actually belongs to Caesar: the mortgage paid off decades ago, the job that took forty years, the endless practical demands of running a household and raising a family. Most of that Caesar-work is behind you now, or nearly so. Ask honestly, in this later season, whether God's claim on your remaining days is getting what it is actually owed, or whether old habits of busyness have simply found new, smaller things to occupy the space Caesar used to fill.

Today is also World Mission Sunday, when the whole Church prays specifically for missionaries. Most people your age will not leave home for the sake of the Gospel. But Paul's first reading praises the Thessalonians for turning faith into actual, visible work, and that standard does not retire when a career does. Prayer itself is a mission field that does not require travel, and it is available to you in whatever hours remain, however many or few they turn out to be.