Learning the Meaning of Jesus’ Desire for Mercy and Call of Sinners, Feast of St. Matthew, September 21, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle
September 21, 2021
Eph 4:1-7.11-13, Ps 19, Mt 9:9-13

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in this homily:

• In the calling of St. Matthew and in every vocation except that of the Blessed Virgin, Jesus acts on his words, “I desire mercy” and “I have come to call … sinners.” Matthew’s vocation is a powerful manifestation of this desire for mercy. Christ indeed came to call not the healthy but the morally sick, not the righteous but sinners, to repentance. Matthew, the formerly despised tax collector and traitor to his fellow Jews, would forever be a walking advertisement of how great the Lord’s forgiveness really is. And he matured very fast in this school of mercy: St. Matthew immediately began to bring his friends to receive that same gift from Jesus. He is an example of good soil who received the gift of the Lord’s mercy and immediately started bearing fruit. He put into practice from the beginning the lesson he would eventually write down from Jesus’ Parable of the Two Debtors: he who had been forgiven 10,000 talents would bring everyone else to receive the same. The Pharisees, on the other hand, had hardened soil. As Jesus’ response to them in the Parables of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep and Lost Sons shows (Lk 15:1-32), they were resistant to the need for mercy in their own lives and weren’t happy when that mercy reached even those they knew were sinners. Jesus was seeking to help them understand with his words today that they cannot respond to God’s call except through mercy.
• I don’t think many of us ponder this truth enough. Many in the world think that God gives someone a vocation to the priesthood or to religious or consecrated life, he does so because we must be somehow canonizable, that we are more in the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, than we are in the mode of St. Matthew, or St. Peter (whose first words to the Lord were “Depart from me for I am a sinful man”) or St. Paul (who used to hunt down and execute Christians). One of the reasons that others occasionally beatify us is because we often don’t speak enough about how much and why we, too, desperately need God’s mercy. I don’t think we ponder enough St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29). God has called us to be Christians, not to mention priests or religious, because he comes to call sinners and the sick, the foolish, weak, lowly, despised, nothing-counters! But then at the same time he exalts the humble by associating us with his holiness as he calls us to be saints!
• When St. Paul in today’s first reading — as well as the Office of Readings — urges us to live in a manner worthy of the calling we have received and to come to full maturity in Christ, he did so within the context of our having been called as sinners to follow Jesus on the road to holiness and to bring others onto that same way. He describes several attributes that must come from our having been called as sinners. We need to be humble, because we remember our origins and never forget that we owe everything to God’s mercy; gentle, because we are sinners reaching out to other sinners, never preaching down; patient, because we know how hard it is sometimes to change a bad habit and develop a good one; bearing with one another through love, since the other is loved, too, by God in his mercy and desires us to be merciful; striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, since we know that the devil’s chief work is to try to sabotage Christ’s work of reconciling all things to the Father and helping us be one like the persons of the Trinity are one. St. Paul reminds us that we are meant to be one Body, one Spirit, made so by the Eucharist and by the work of communion from the third Person of the Trinity; one hope of our call, that we sinners can become by God’s help great saints; one Lord, rather than making ourselves gods through worshipping various idols; one faith by which we trust in Jesus and his mercy; one baptism, by which are sins are wiped away; one God and Father of all, who is Rich in Mercy and who is over all and through all and in all. He has given us each charisms to perfect the good work of mercy he has begun in us and he has done lavishly, according to the measure of Christ’s gift of mercy. This is to build up Christ’s body through love, until we grow together to maturity to the extent of the full stature of Christ, which is when his work of purification will be complete and his Bride will be unstained, washed by water and the word.
• The Lord’s desire for mercy and how he wants to make us sharers in that gift, to the full measure of Christ’s gift, was made plain 68 years ago today in the call of Jorge Bergoglio to be a priest while he was going to confession. It was September 21, 1953 and a teenage Jorge Bergoglio was planning to spend the day with friends. Before meeting with them at the train station, he stopped by to pray at his parish Church dedicated to St. Joseph. A priest he had never seen before, Fr. Carlos Duarte Ibarra, was in the Church. He decided to approach him and asked him to hear his confession. We don’t know what Jorge said to the priest or how the priest replied. But we do know that that confession totally changed not only the teenager’s plans for the day but for the whole course of his life. A few years ago on the Vigil of Pentecost, Pope Francis shared some of his memories of this pivotal event in his vocation story. “One day in particular was very important to me: September 21, 1953. I was almost 17. It was ‘Students’ Day,’ for us the first day of spring — for you the first day of autumn. Before going to the celebration I passed through the parish I normally attended. I found a priest whom I did not know and I felt the need to go to confession. For me this was an experience of encounter: I found that Someone was waiting for me. Yet I do not know what happened. I can’t remember. I do not know why that particular priest was there whom I did not know, or why I felt this desire to confess, but the truth is that Someone was waiting for me. He had been waiting for me for some time. After making my confession I felt something had changed. I was not the same. I had heard something like a voice, or a call. I was convinced that I should become a priest.” He was called to be a priest so that he could continue that mission, just as much as St. Matthew did. His papal motto, taken from the Office of Readings every priest reads on September 21 for the Feast of St. Matthew, relives the encounter that took place in the Buenos Aires confessional. “Miserando atque Eligendo,” St. Bede’s words about the former tax collector that can also fittingly be said about the one-time Argentine chemist: “He saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him.” The Lord wants us to recognize that he has chosen us through his mercy and wants us to help others to recognize the same calling. Little did Jorge Bergoglio recognize then that he would one day become the successor of St. Peter. But he already intuited he was to be a successor of St. Matthew, someone called through mercy and sent out as a herald and minister of that mercy. We, too, each in our own way, are called and sent out by the Lord as successors of St. Matthew as well.
• Today as we come here to this Mass the same Jesus, the Divine Physician, who called and chose Matthew through his mercy, comes to call and choose us anew again. St. Matthew, we know, was present at the first Mass and was given the sacramental power by Christ to “do this in memory of” him. As we prepare to offer with faith and gratitude Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity shed “for the forgiveness of sins,” we turn through St. Matthew’s intercession to God, the eternal Father, to receive us together with his Son in expiation for our sins and those of the whole world.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Reading 1
EPH 4:1-7, 11-13

Brothers and sisters:
I, a prisoner for the Lord,
urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another through love,
striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit
through the bond of peace:
one Body and one Spirit,
as you were also called to the one hope of your call;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all,
who is over all and through all and in all.
But grace was given to each of us
according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
And he gave some as Apostles, others as prophets,
others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers,
to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry,
for building up the Body of Christ,
until we all attain to the unity of faith
and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood,
to the extent of the full stature of Christ.

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