Caravaggio, La vocación de san Mateo (1600), óleo sobre tela,
Iglesia de San Luis de los Franceses (Roma).
...
The three parables in today's gospel are in answer to the Pharisees and Scribes complaints about
Jesus, saying that he can’t be the Messiah because he welcomes sinners and eats
with them. Eating with someone,
for the ancients and for us, is a way of expressing friendship and love. Jesus does not argue that he is eating
with sinners, his argument is that he has called them to God and they have
come. He is friends with them. He
loves them. He is full of joy that
they have come home to God. Jesus is telling us that we should be happy that
others have been forgiven. He is also telling us that we should join in the joy
of the Lord because we have been forgiven. First of all, unlike the Pharisees
and scribes who saw themselves as holy and who considered everyday people as
the hoard of sinners, the vast majority of us are well aware of our failures.
Sometimes we think about something that we have done and feel devastated. These thoughts besiege us: How could
God forgive me? Maybe I don’t even belong here, with people whose commitment to
the Lord has been far more solid than mine. Perhaps at times we have an experience of God’s love in our
lives and then suffer from our past even more. This is all really the normal reaction of our commitment to
the Lord. The closer we come to
Him, the more we are aware of the impact of the times that we did not choose
Him. Maybe the problem is that we
are focusing on ourselves rather than on God. According to the three parables, the Lord is delighted that
we are once more in His Company.
Like the Forgiving Father, His focus is not on the past. He doesn’t carry a grudge. His focus is on our present and our
presence with him. Our return to
Him is a cause of his joy. It takes a tremendous amount of humility to recognize
that God has forgiven us. The Scribes and Pharisees did not seem at all pleased
that Jesus had forgiven known sinners. We really have to be careful that we
don’t behave the same way. Perhaps
we come to Mass at times and see someone that we know has done some really bad
stuff. What is our reaction? According to the Gospel for today, our
reaction should be: I am happy he or she is here, choosing Christ. Another’s past is not my concern. I need to be happy for him or her. I am here to eat with him or her. That
person is here for the same reasons that we are here: compassion, forgiveness,
and love. The Lord feels bad for what we have done to ourselves. And He feels bad for what that person
did to himself or herself. The
Lord forgives us. The Lord
forgives Him or her. The Lord
wants us to live in His Love. The
Lord wants that person to live in His love. In the beautiful text we just heard
as second reading, St. Paul mentions an early Christian saying, “Christ came
into the world to save sinners. Of
these I am the foremost. But for that very reason I was mercifully treated, so
that in me Christ might display all His Patience as an example for those who would
come to believe in Him.” Exactly: Jesus came into the world to forgive sinners. And I am one of them • AE
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