4 July 2025 – Friday of the 13th week of Ordinary Time
Genesis 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67; Matthew 9:9-13
Homily
In his response to the Pharisees who are scandalized by his eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus explicitly and literally quotes a saying that the prophet Hosea put into God's mouth: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings’ (Hosea 6:6).
Reducing the Covenant with God to a moralizing bilateral contract had been one of the strongest temptations of the people of Israel. The relationship with God was easily reduced to a series of ritual gestures by which one bought God's favour, and religion had little to do with the practice of justice and even less with love and mercy. Although the prophets, and Hosea in particular, had spoken out against this attitude, it was exactly that of the Pharisees who watched Jesus eating with Matthew and the other tax collectors.
The Christian community has always been subject to the same temptation. Perhaps it is a particular temptation for those who consider themselves and call themselves ‘religious.’ We easily assume that once we have been faithful to all the ceremonies and observances prescribed by the law of the Church or our own rules, we have acquired a certain right to salvation. Once again, Jesus reminds us that all these practices have no other purpose than to express our love for God—a love that cannot exist unless it is embodied in love for our neighbor; and that if this love does not exist, all our observances and rites are vain and meaningless. The Lord does not want them.
The discovery of God's gratuitous love is always a call to conversion. The description of Matthew's call and conversion in the brief account we have just read is magnificently simple. Matthew is sitting down. He is, in fact, a man who is well established. He has a profession that brings him wealth, material well-being and power, even if it makes him considered a sinner by the Pharisees. Jesus does not give him a long speech or lengthy explanations. He simply says to him in passing, ‘Follow me.’ And the extraordinary thing is that this man, who is “sitting” and well established, ‘gets up’ and follows him, certainly without knowing where he is going or where it will lead him.
A little later, ‘as Jesus was at table in the house,’ many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. In the Gospel of Matthew (e.g., 9:28; 13:1, 36; 17:25), the expression ‘in the house’ generally means the house of Jesus and his disciples. (In a parallel account in Luke, where the tax collector is called Levi, it is Levi who gives a feast; but it is not certain that Levi and Matthew are the same person). Furthermore, it is not stated or even implied that all these tax collectors and sinners were converted, like Matthew, and became disciples of Jesus. No, they are simply there, and Jesus has no problem sharing a meal with them. Jesus thus shows that he breaks down all the barriers that men have erected between themselves. And to emphasise the fact that all these barriers are man-made and not God-made, he sends the Pharisees back to school: ‘Go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”.’
We still need to hear this lesson from Jesus, both individually and collectively. For we are always tempted to establish a safety cordon around ourselves to separate us from all those we consider inferior or ‘less good’ because of their ideas, their religion, their culture or simply their profession.
Let us be careful not to dissociate ourselves from those whom Jesus came to call.
Armand VEILLEUX
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