God’s Mercy and Our Vocation, 1st Saturday (II), January 13, 2017

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers
January 13, 2018
1 Sam 9:1-4.17-19.10:1, Ps 21, Mk 2:13-17

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were intended in the homily: 

• As we finish the first week of Ordinary Time, dedicated to journeying with God-with-us and pondering how through his preaching, teaching, exorcising and miracle working he seeks to make us partakers in his divinity through assuming our humanity, we come to the second day of a real synthesis. Yesterday we had the healing of the paralytic’s sins and today we have the healing of the tax collector’s Matthew’s. And we discover in those encounters our own summons by the Lord on the day of baptism and beyond. Pope Francis, after he received his vocation on the feat of St. Matthew in 1953, when he was 16, pondered greater St. Bede’s commentary from which he later took his papal motto, miserando atque eligendo. St. Matthew, Pope Francis, and all of us are called by the Lord in the very act of his forgiving us. We are called precisely because we are sinners, since he came to call not the righteous but sinners. We are called precisely because we’re sick, but the Divine Physician left the healthy confines of heaven to heal us. These lessons are shown with great relief in today’s famous scene.
• Seeing Levi (Matthew) at his tax collectors post — where, like other tax collectors, he would rip off his own people for profit, giving the Romans what they assessed and using the military to force out of his fellow Jews whatever more he could get so that he could keep it for himself — Jesus called this notorious public sinner to follow him, to leave his money behind, to leave his sins behind, and follow him down a path not of grasping but of giving. Matthew was so moved by being given this second chance, this salvation, that he called together all of us his friends, who likewise had a reputation, probably well-earned, of being notorious sinners, so that they, likewise, could meet Jesus and encounter the Lamb of God who had come to liberate them from their sins.
• It was too much for some of the scribes and Pharisees, however. They complained to Jesus’ new disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Their attitude was to separate themselves as far as possible from sinners, to let the sinners sleep in their iniquitous beds and die in their sins, failing to recognize, of course, that they, too, were sinners, and if Jesus abided by that principle they would themselves be cut off from salvation. Jesus, however, hearing what they were saying, said one of the most important lines in the entire Gospel: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
• Yesterday, we heard the powerful Gospel of the healing of the paralyzed man, first his sins, then to show that Jesus had the power to heal sins, his paralysis. All of us, likewise, have been paralyzed in our lives by temptations, by sinful choices or even habits. We are all in need of Jesus’ healing. To the extent that we have received a Christian calling, a Christian vocation — and we all have — we must remember that we have received it insofar as we are sinners. Jesus came to call sinners. The entire mission of the Church is, like Matthew, to host a banquet for sinners so that other sinners, just like us, can encounter Jesus and the liberating power of his merciful love.
• Jesus having forgiven and called us in the same act sends us forth to become his agents of reconciliation for others by bringing others to Jesus. Just as much as Saul was appointed by God and anointed by Samuel so that Lord has appointed and anointed us, as little Christs, so that we might carry our mission as Saul wants commissioned to do his. We may be afraid of what others might say. But in the Responsorial Psalm we see that God will strengthen us, that in the Lord’s strength, we find our joy. And God’s greatest joy is forgiving. He will strengthen us to live a holy and converted life and help us to bring others to experience that same joy.
• St. Hilary of Poitiers was somehow who brought God’s mercy in many ways to the Christians and non-Christians in France in the fourth century. He was born into a very well-off pagan family. Eventually through study and following an ethical conscience, he saw that polytheism was untenable, that there could only be one God. He began to study the alternatives. Eventually he found the Bible and was fascinated by God’s self-description to Moses at the burning bush (“I am who am”) as well as the sage advice God gave throughout his interaction with his people. When he got to the New Testament, he was won over by Jesus and asked for baptism as a married adult and father of a daughter. After his baptism, he continued his study and prayer to get to know God better. Four years after his baptism, incredibly, he was asked by the people of Poitiers to become their bishop, even though he would need to be continent with his wife, even though he would need to leave what he was doing, even though he would need to receive the sacramental triple crown of the three grades of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. He tried to refuse the office, not considering himself up to the task, but those who had chosen him only grew in admiration of his humility. So he assumed the office. It was a time when the Church was in chaos because of the Arian heresy, which was very popular in France. He took to study, writing, preaching and prayer to combat the heresy, and he did it so effectively that he was banished by the emperor Constantius from France for three years to Phrygia. In Phrygia, however, he didn’t wallow. Instead he prayed and wrote, and those treatises in defense of God’s divinity are still essential for us today. In just 18 years as a bishop, in just 22 years as a Christian, he incredibly became a doctor of the Church. His life was a commentary on how one, having received the Lord’s mercy, is moved from within with a desire to share it, and he shared not only in Christ’s great care and love for the poor, sick and needy, but also for those in ignorance and error. He taught — and through his hallowed writings, teaches still.
• After he himself experienced Jesus’ mercy, Matthew called his friends, fellow sinners, to experience the same healing love in a banquet with Jesus. Today Matthew joins us at this daily banquet for sinners in the refectory of the hospital that is the Church. We begin this Mass remembering who we are, confessing ourselves to be people who have “greatly sinned” through our own “most grievous fault,” crying out “Lord, have mercy,” proclaiming that we’re not worthy to receive him under our roof, but begging him to say the word, to forgive us, and make us capable. And we make that prayer not for ourselves individually but for all of us, turning to the Lamb of God and asking him to have mercy on “us” together. Today we ask him to help each of us become the Matthews of our day, inviting all those we know— the fellow sinners in our families, among our friends, in our neighborhoods — to come to experience the same healing in this great hospital we ourselves have received. Jesus came to call sinners. And our mission is as reconciled sinners to go and proclaim the Gospel of the Lord, the Good News that salvation from sins is possible, so that one day we may all be reunited in that banquet of eternal life among saved sinners in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The readings for today’s Mass were: