Celebrating Matthew and Mercy
21st September, 2016
Eph 4:1-7, 11-13; Mt 9:9-13
We celebrate the feast of St. Matthew... the celebration this year should be a very special invitation as we are in the year of Mercy...the Mercy that overlooked the sinner that Matthew was and penetrated his child like soul that yearned for meaning in life. It is a special occasion to celebrate this feast this year, as our Holy Father reflects in his encyclical announcing the Year of Mercy: Misericordiae Vultus. The Holy Father reflects through the words of St. Bede, the mercifulness of God revealed in choosing a so-called sinner, a tax collector to become a close collaborator with the Christ, in God's salvific design.
When Matthew was called, he was a tax collector, a sinner by self identity and by the social standards. He could have been a young man who was following the trade of some of the elders and getting trained in it, sitting at the tax booth. Naturally the rest of those who were with Jesus loathed the very idea of joining him in their band. Jesus was not only being merciful himself, he was training his disciples to be merciful too. He was teaching them to see the interior beauty of a person and not to get stuck to the external judgments. That is Mercy - staying away from prejudice and allowing a person to be whatever he or she is, not forcing the person to be what the society frames him or her to be.
Matthew stands as an icon of God's forgiving mercy that embraces us in spite of all our unworthiness. God's Mercy is greater, deeper and broader than anything else that we can think of.
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