First Saturday in Ordinary Time. - Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

 

A king passing along his country side saw a wretched pauper in rags, the wise king discerning that the pauper was skilled in some art which could be useful in the Palace but because of the limitations of his present conditions could not carry out his skill, invited the pauper to come to the Palace so he could help him in some way, but on getting to the Palace gate on the appointed day, the gatekeeper (who is also a worker in the Palace) drove the pauper away because he deemed him to have no business in the Palace. When the king learns of it, what do you think he will do to the gatekeeper?

 The social stigma and discrimination by the society  especially by those who have accredited righteousness to themselves deters the public sinner from approaching Christ more than the imprisoning habit of the sin itself. The awareness that the so called righteous people are predisposed to reject and condemn them prevents one from  trying to come to Christ, this could lead to one believing he's hopelessly bad, (despair), and have you heard the saying that he who is rejected doesn't reject himself?  These victims of religious discrimination/stigmatisation then resolve to accept their limitations as their identity and to find happiness being the worst they have accepted themselves to be since they can't be any good. If a Christian does this to another, then, he's scaring people away from God's kingdom rather than bringing them in. Come to think of it, Christians are meant to be Christ-like, and Christ would neither condemn nor cast away a sinner ( whether public or not) he would rather go out of his way to seek, heal and save them, to bring them close to himself and through him to the Father, therefore if anyone has the habit of condemning, discriminating against or discouraging  known sinners, then they're simply not truly Christians because that attitude is not Christ-like. We are called to win souls for Christ, not to scare them away from Grace. Let us not destroy their hope for a change because it is only those in hell that have a cause to be hopeless. Christ in today's Gospel said that he came to call not the righteous but sinners, for if there was no sin in the first place, their wouldn't have been a need for his coming to shed his blood on the cross for its remission. When the king summons, the servants should not send away, this is not a call to exalt or turn a blind eye to wrong doings especially when they have become habitual. It is rather a call to see in every person a potential Christian, and their faults not as their identity but as their limitations. It could change a whole lot. We are not to keep quiet in the face of evil, but we are to rebuke with love. Let correction be constructive and judgement be left for God to make. 

Prayer: Dear Lord, in your generosity you have shown me mercy ,may I not deter others from experiencing your unfathomable mercy.

Sr. Olivia Marcel, OP.

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