Today’s 1st reading warns the people to stop false accusation. We all have a tendency to, accuse people, pigeon hole them and succumb to malicious speech and sarcasm. We need to observe the Sabbath and not just follow our own pursuits. People are into a real busy work week and do not even go to church. Do we make time for God? Do we reflect on God and worship Him? Are we endlessly just trying to do as much as we can in order to have as much as we can? We need to realize that once we recognize God’s law then we quickly recognize our need for grace that brings us to prayer life. There is a constant force of the culture, the temptations to live an extravagant and impure life, and the force of our fallen human nature that make us give in to sin. We better recognize sin in our life. Things can get difficult and we can not do all in our strength. We struggle with sin most of the time. Our sins isolate us. We’ve got to change, admit to ourselves and then to a priest. We should avail of the sacrament of confession and do away with fear of what the priest might think. This is our human nature. Confession is a beautiful experience when we hear those words of absolution. Our sins are gone and forgotten and we are forgiven. To tell another person could be so liberating, it helps us to believe in God’s acceptance and forgiveness. It awakens something in us to help us believe in God’s love for us. The priest in the confession is like the father in the Prodigal son. Waiting in the confession chamber is a duty to the priest. He makes himself available for us and just be there for people to experience God’s forgiveness. Amen. Hallelujah!
Isaiah 58:9-14
...If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; 10 if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; 11 then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails...If you hold back your foot on the sabbath from following your own pursuits on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight, and the LORD’s holy day honorable; if you honor it by not following your ways, seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice — 14 Then you shall delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Nowadays, a fatal disease is no longer fatal but just a life threatening disease if left uncared for. Modern Science has come up with several interventions to combat these diseases. When we don’t feel well, we consult a doctor for advice on how to care for ourselves. An example could be hypertension, before people just die of it without prior treatment but since the dawn of anti hypertensive medicines and proper care to maintain a good blood pressure there has been significant improvement on such cases. The same with our souls we have a disease that if left uncared for can cause death. It would be better to think of our souls as such. It’s easier to be receptive to the gospel if we consider ourselves lost. We have been saved by God but we can lose it just as we can lose our human life for not caring for it. We all have a terminal disease called sin, we need a doctor to give us advice. Our souls need a Divine Physician and consult the sacred scriptures in order to know the things to follow. The sacraments serve as the medication that we can compare to medicine from the doctor that we don’t understand how it works. It is the same with the sacraments although we may not understand fully how it works just like how medicines work to cure our diseases. In the spiritual life our physician is Jesus Christ, He tells us what to do on how to be healed. We must not follow quacks and pseudo scientists. We must trust our souls not to quacks but to God. We follow the saints who have lived their life in n exemplary nature. In this way we become free of the serious symptoms of the sicknesses of the soul like pride, covetousness, envy, lust, sloth, anger and gluttony. We seek the truth and the truth will make us free. Amen. Hallelujah!
Psalms 86:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
R: Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
1 Incline your ear, O LORD; answer me, for I am afflicted and poor. 2 Keep my life, for I am devoted to you; save your servant who trusts in you. 3 You are my God. (R) Have mercy on me, O Lord, for to you I call all the day. 4 Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. (R) 5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in kindness to all who call upon you. 6 Hearken, O LORD, to my prayer and attend to the sound of my pleading.
Today’s gospel brings our focus on the life of Levi the tax collector or more popularly known as St. Matthew. Pope Benedict XVI on reflecting on his life said that Jesus does not exclude anyone from His friendship. Tax collectors and prostitutes during the time of Jesus consider them as public sinners. They work for Rome and can set their own commission from taxes they collect from the locals. They are despised for this no less than the prostitutes. Jesus called Peter, James & John while they were fishing and did the same for the tax collectors. We are mistaken to think that God thinks as men do. He chooses whom He wills and gives grace to those He wills to Himself. This is the heart of the good news of the gospel. God does not abandon us to our sins. He offers grace to sinners. We may want to recall the story in the gospel of Pharisees praying in the front row of the temple and the tax collector at the farthest end beating his breast. He prays to God as a repentant sinner would and felt closer and came out justified to God. The repentant tax collector can be a model for us. Although he sinned, he did not stay in his sinful habit and converted. We can experience God’s forgiveness in the confession. This is one way we can draw closer to Him and come to know Him in an amazing way. For all of us, to some degree we can come up with reasons not to go to confession. As Pope John Paul II said, the sin of modernity is that people have lost the sense of sin. We have to recognize the evil that we have done and must repent. The absolute bedrock of spiritual life is to follow the 10 commandments, work on sin and stop sinning. We are sometimes misled and think that when we have a type of prayer we think that we already have a spiritual life. We’ve got to have the humility to say that God is smarter than we are and follow and obey what we are told in the 10 commandments. Matthew is a model of conversion and change. He did not just stay where he was at. Faith led him to change, he got up and followed him. He left his livelihood and left his post. What false idols do we have in our life? Let us pray for grace to see in our lives clearly what we’re attached to and pour them down. Are we really in God’s disposal? Can He do to us what He wants to do with us? Or are we still caught up in sin? Let’s pray for freedom and imitate St. Matthew. Amen. Hallelujah!
Luke 5:27-32
Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” 28 And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him...
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