TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Readings from the Feast of St. Matthew (Is 42:1, 5-9; Eph 4:1-7, 11-13; Mt 9:9-13)

Follow Me

When Matthew woke up that morning and first began his day at his booth, did he have any idea of what was going to happen? Did he know that was the last day he would be there? Had he ever been one in the crowds who listened to Jesus or heard of him from the people talking in the streets? He would not have been one to listen in the synagogue when Jesus was teaching, for Matthew was not allowed to be in the synagogue. He was a tax collector, a traitor to his people, an enemy, cut off from the Jewish daily life. He was considered dead.

St. Matthew places this story of his calling in the midst of stories of Jesus healing a leper, healing the centurion’s servant, the raising to life of a young girl, and the healing of the woman with twelve years of hemorrhaging. In the midst of these healings comes Matthew’s healing. He was as cut off from the people as was the centurion. He was as unclean as the leper and the woman hemorrhaging, and as dead to his people as the young girl. Jesus, reaches into his life and with two words, Follow me, changes everything for Matthew.

Why did Matthew not question, or say I need time to think about this? He was a man who every day calculated costs and debts, and yet he didn’t stop to calculate what this “following” would cost him.  What did he see in Jesus’s eyes and hear in his voice?  Did he hear Isaiah’s words from our first reading, ”my chosen, in whom my soul delights”? And “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you.” And especially, “the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.”  Matthew’s life is no longer to be defined by his sins. He left that life at the two words of Jesus. He left it to live, as St. Paul later would write for all of us, “in a manner worthy of the call you have received.”

I, too, am chosen, and so are you. I am called to believe I can live in a manner worthy, to believe in the words of the priest, “I absolve you from your sins,” and that I am no longer defined by them. In the midst of the struggle to believe I am “chosen” and to live a life worthy of that, I need to remember we are all called, are all sitting at the table with tax collectors and sinners. But Jesus is there, and so is his grace to follow him — HE who is ”over all, and through all and in all.”

--Nora O’Brien

Send Us Forth are reflections written by St. Matthew parishioners and friends.