(Is 58:9-14; Ps 86; Lk 5:27-32)<\/p>\n
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Have you ever felt a call from God to do something more with your life?<\/p>\n
The call of Levi today invites us to reconsider God\u2019s call to us, our deeper purpose in life, and how we can respond more fully.<\/p>\n
Details are important in the written scriptures. We are informed in this passage that Jesus has just healed a paralyzed man, left the house where he was staying, saw a tax collector named Levi working at his unsavoury trade, and called him.<\/p>\n
What we see here is the Messiah at work in a quiet and unassuming way. Jesus as the Messiah had a two-fold mission \u2013 to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal. Having just healed a paralyzed man, Jesus now directly forgives Matthew for gouging the poor, and then invites him to a radical change of life \u2013 to follow Jesus into a new vocation. That experience of forgiveness, of God\u2019s unconditional love and mercy incarnate in Jesus, is actually the criteria for leadership in the church \u2013 for St. Peter, for St. Paul, and here for Levi.<\/p>\n
Bishop Robert Barron, in his comments on this gospel, reminds us that to be a tax collector in Jesus\u2019 time\u2014a Jew collaborating with Rome\u2019s oppression of one\u2019s own people\u2014was to be a contemptible figure.<\/p>\n
Jesus gazed at Levi and simply said, “Follow me.” Did Jesus invite Levi because the tax collector merited it? Was Jesus responding to a request from Levi or some longing in the sinner\u2019s heart? Certainly not. Grace, by definition, comes unbidden and without explanation.<\/p>\n
Levi\u2019s response is priceless and significant. He gets up, leaves everything and follows Jesus. To appreciate what is happening here, we must put ourselves in Levi\u2019s shoes. He probably already felt some guilt at what he was doing, but the lure of money led him on. Now suddenly, there appeared in his life a person who was understanding, compassionate, not judging, merciful, and also, the one person who could satisfy the deepest yearning of the human heart for meaning, purpose, intimacy \u2013 love. And Levi was aware, ready and responded.<\/p>\n His response included an extravagant gesture of gratitude, putting on a great banquet for Jesus, and for his fellow tax collectors and other probably unsavoury characters whom one would hesitate to consider friends. Imagine the table conversation \u2013 all of them probably a bit overwhelmed by what was happening to Levi. Yet Jesus is quite at home at this lavish banquet, I think because it was celebrating the transformation of a human being, and perhaps the other tax collectors as well, into a better human being. After all, sin is hamartia,<\/em> falling short of the person God wants us to be, like an arrow falling short of a target. Levi was suddenly becoming the very best person he could be, and that was cause for celebration.<\/p>\n Isaiah in the first reading is quite clear on what it is we need to be leaving behind to be that better person \u2013 blaming others, gossip, selfishness, abusing the Sabbath, etc. He stresses the positive consequences of faith in God and doing God\u2019s will \u2013 our light will shine in the dark; our needs to be loved, to belong and to be valued will be met, and we will experience serenity and a wellness in our lives.<\/p>\n For Isaiah, our first call is to holiness: wholeness, purity; love, but above all we are chosen, beloved, set apart. We are to live out of this awareness. Isaiah adds that we are called to live out our vocations above all, caring for the poor and the afflicted, in all the ways that happens in wounded human beings. Catherine Dougherty, founder of the Madonna House Apostolate, stated, \u201cPoverty is the face of Christ, for no one was poorer than he.\u201d Catholic activist Daniel Berrigan liked to say, \u201cFaith is not so much in our minds or our hearts, as in our seats and feet.\u201d<\/p>\n For its part, Psalm 36 reminds us of what our God is like, and almost prophetically, what Jesus as the Messiah would do in fulfilling this and so many other Old Testament passages \u2013 forgive and heal. In the words of the psalmist, \u201cFor you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.\u201d Vocational call is strong in the gospel, and in our lives here<\/p>\n The Eucharist is our encounter with the Risen Lord today, through word and sacrament, forgiving and healing us, and calling us to follow him, each in our own unique way. May our celebration today give us the strength to follow our call, and to especially serve God\u2019s people, especially those most in need.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HOMILY SATURDAY AFTER ASH WED Called to Loving Obedience and Holiness (Is 58:9-14; Ps 86; Lk 5:27-32) ********************************************** Have you ever felt a call from God to do something more with your life? The call of Levi today invites us to reconsider God\u2019s call to us, our deeper purpose in life, and how we can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies","category-lent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5836,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions\/5836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Call-of-Matthew-Caravaggio.jpeg\")
In Caravaggio\u2019s magnificent painting of this scene, Levi, dressed anachronistically in sixteenth-century finery, responds to Jesus\u2019 summons by pointing incredulously to himself and wearing a quizzical expression, as if to say, “Me? You want me?” Just as creation is\u00a0ex nihilo,\u00a0<\/em>so conversion is a new creation, a gracious remaking of a person from the nonbeing of his or her sin.<\/p>\n