"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

 Jesus' willingness to spend time with tax collectors and other disreputable people.

  Jesus tells the Pharisees that He did not come to call the righteous. He came to call sinners.

 He is seeking the lost. He is healing the sick. He is saving sinners.

*** 1st Reading ***

Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13

Therefore I,

The prisoner of Christ, invite you to live the vocation you have received. Be humble, kind, patient, and bear with one another in love.

Make every effort to keep among you the unity of Spirit through bonds of peace. Let there be one body and one spirit, for God, in calling you, gave the same Spirit to all. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God, the Father of all, who is above all and works through all and is in all.

 But to each of us divine grace is given ac­cording to the measure of Christ’s gift. As for his gifts, to some he gave to be apostles, to others prophets, or even evangelists, or pastors and teachers.

 So he prepared those who belong to him for the ministry, in order to build up the Body of Christ, until we are all united in the same faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Thus we shall become the perfect Man, upon reaching maturity and sharing the fullness of Christ.

 

Ps 19:2-3, 4-5

Their message goes out through all the earth.

 

**** Gospel ****     

Matthew 9:9-13

 As Jesus moved on from there, he saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom-house, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And Matthew got up and followed him. Now it happened, while Jesus was at table in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and other sinners joined Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this they said to his disciples, “Why is it that your master eats with those sinners and tax collectors?”

 When Jesus heard this he said, “Healthy people do not need a doctor, but sick people do. Go and find out what this means: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

 

 Gospel Reflection:

Life as Vocation

The movie My Sister’s keeper begins with these words (voice over)of Anna, the protagonist: “Most babies are coincidences ﹝…﹞products of drunken evenings and lack of birth control. They’s accidents.” Really?

Compare these words with those of Yahweh:” Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jer 1:5). The modern world suffers from the loss of the sense of vacation and the perception of life as meaningless accident.

Even within the Church, we have circumscribed the sense of vocation to priests and religious, and go on lamenting about the “lack of vocations!” Every human being on earth has received a vocation and consequently a mission which is uniquely his/hers, and which no one else can substitute.

On this day when we meditate on the call of , Matthew, let us listen to the plea of St. Paul (first reading): “Live the vocation you have received!”