Week 9 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Peter 3:11-15, 17-18; Psalm 89; Mark 12:13-17

Probably the earliest recorded copyright dispute is that involving Colmcille (521-597) and his abbot Finian (c.495-c.589), an argument adjudicated by the high king of Ireland, Diarmait mac Cearball (died c.565). The problem arose because Colmcille decided to copy secretly a psalter belonging to the monastery. Finian was angry that he had not done things in the proper way. What did it matter, Colmcille argued, as long as the Word of God was disseminated and reached as many people as possible? We might hear religious people saying similar things these days when they sit lightly to the rules about copyright.

Diarmait judged in favour of Finian with the famous words 'to every cow its calf, to every book its copy'. Just as the calf belongs to its mother, the copy of a book belongs to the original. The aftermath was terrible, eventually leading to the deaths of many people and the exile of Colmcille to Scotland. But, in God's providence he founded the monastery on Iona which became a spring from which the Christian message spread across Scotland and into northern England.

To every cow its calf, to every book its copy. The image belongs to the original. Jesus says the same in today's gospel. 'Whose image do you find on the coin', he asks. 'Caesar's', they reply. 'So it belongs to Caesar', he says, 'You must therefore give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God'.

This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that the territory of human life is therefore divided up between Caesar and God, between the profane and the sacred, the secular and the religious. But think about it for a moment. If the image of Caesar is found on the coins of the Roman empire, where is the image of God to be found? There is only one answer: the human being is the image of God. And it is not just the human being in part that is God's image, or the human being in some of his activities. It is the human being simply and in her totality that is the image of God and so everything about human life, all aspects and activities, all areas of interest and endeavour, all relationships and commitments - everything that belongs to the image of God, belongs to God.

'Go on growing in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ', we read in today's first reading. There is a sense in which the image of God in us is to be found simply in our created nature, in those gifts that mark us off from the other animals, gifts of intelligence, freedom and creativity. This is how many Christian teachers have spoken about it, seeing the image of God in us in what makes us to be a particular species, homo sapiens.

Two further comments can be made about this.

One is that the image of God, for Thomas Aquinas for example, is found not just in what is specific to us but in what belongs to us comprehensively. So our physical nature, which we share with all animals, also images God because just as the soul is everywhere in the body so God is everywhere in creation. And our sexual nature also images God, because just as man and woman unite in love and bear fruit in the procreation of children so God is creative bearing fruit in many different ways at all times.

The other comment is, as Augustine for example emphasises, that the image of God in our intellectual faculties is only properly present when those faculties - knowledge, freedom, love, memory, decision - have as their object God himself and the search to know him and to grow in his grace.

So the encouragement in today's first reading - 'go on growing in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and saviour' - is a way of saying 'go on growing into what you are, the image of God by creation, the image of God restored and exalted in redemption, the image of God destined to be transformed in glory on the Day of God when the new heavens and the new earth will mean also the revelation of the new man and woman, the new redeemed and glorified humanity'.

To every cow its calf. To every book its copy. To the Creator and Lord of all things belongs that in which His image is to be found, the human being simply, in her totality, and everything about him and her, without exception. And God is continually strengthening that image in grace, enabling it to grow in knowledge and love.