Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Intention: In this time of Lent, we may accept God’s invitation to change our hearts and ways and turn ourselves again to him.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 5:27-32
Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”
A Brief Lenten Reflection
The story of the call of Matthew provides a powerful lesson on how easily our biases and judgements can mire us in absurdity. Two groups of men, both consecrated to doing the will of God, question why Jesus would absent himself from them and choose to be with known sinners. In their minds, God’s grace is proprietary to them and to those who meet their standards of worthiness. When we choose to view life only through the lenses of our limited sensibilities, living becomes an exercise in reducing reality to our narrow comfort zones. We tend to forget, or perhaps even reject, that we all exist within a single fabric of relationships in which we both discover and complete ourselves. A person’s spiritual journey is not about separating ourselves from the human condition but by immersing ourselves in it. As author and scholar Joseph Campbell once suggested, “Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life.” Insulating and disconnecting ourselves from others is to lose touch with what makes us fully alive. The time of Lent calls us to gather on the common ground of our need for redemption, and to remember that how we choose to be is also who we choose to be.
Prayer
Eternal Father, each day we have the choice of acting either with faith and integrity or with arrogance and hypocrisy. Fill us today with the determination to turn away from pride and self-deceit. May we see without judgment the lives and the needs of others. In this time of Lent, help us to acknowledge and mend the faults in ourselves, and to serve you by helping to heal the brokenness of our world. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.