“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Do we recognize our need for the Divine Physician? Are we humble enough to recognize our need for the healing that Jesus came to bring to the world? The sick who need him in today's Gospel are "tax collectors and sinners", rather than those with physical disease. They are sick with the sickness unto death, which is sin. They recognized in themselves the struggle with which even Saint Paul was familiar.
For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing (see Romans 7:18-19).
Jesus came to give life in a deeper sense than mere continuation or prolongation or our mortal lives on earth. He came to be the source of life (see John 1:3, 3:16) that had been missing since Adam squandered what was meant to be our inheritance by believing the serpent's lie (see Genesis 2:17).
When we experience the sickness of sin, the sickness which is to some extent still present even in Christians living with Sacramental grace operative in our lives, what do we do with that dissonance? What do we do when we recognize the struggle Paul described still preventing us from living in the full freedom of the Spirit, when the old self still seems to control our lives? There are three fundamental ways in which we can respond. The first- and this is all too common even for Christians- is to simply ignore and deny the presence of any imperfection, anything that would indicate a deviation from our ideal religious self-image. The second is to recognize our need but despair that anything can be done about it. We become, as it were, terminally unique. In this condition we think that although Jesus may have been able to help others we ourselves are somehow so specially bad that he can't free us as well. The third option, and the only one worth pursuing, is a humility that is deep enough to recognize our need but believe that Jesus is the one who can heal us. We then avoid the sort of inverted pride that says that we are somehow so bad as to be out of his reach. When we recognize our need and the fact the Jesus is able to address it and desires to do so we begin to experience freedom the moment we hear his voice.
Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed Jesus.
Matthew was ready to make a break with a life which he knew was altogether unsatisfactory. He could no longer entertain any illusions that he would find fulfillment at the customs post and he was ready to move when Jesus invited him. This contrasted with the hardness of heart found in the Pharisees. They too really did need Jesus. They too suffered from the same inability to truly love God from the heart above all else. But they allowed their hearts to be hardened when that condition didn't match their self-image. Because of that they not only couldn't follow Jesus to find freedom for themselves but they criticized any movement that even approached the lives of obvious and evident sinners. It was not so much to preserve their purity that they did so as from the fact that they knew somewhere deep down that they were no different. They vicariously condemned in others the thing in themselves with which they were not yet prepared to confront.
“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
The point of the Gospel for us today might be that, although it would seem to normal human ways of thinking, to be like Matthew and other self-acknowledged sinners would be a defect of mental health, a lack of appropriate self-confidence or self-assurance, it is actually the necessary condition for growth. Seeing ourselves as we are in the light of the presence of the Divine Physician does not result in feeling condemned or hopeless, for we see at the same moment the one who stands ready to bring us ever greater levels of healing leading to ever greater spiritual freedom.
Then, from a flask he had with him, Samuel poured oil on Saul’s head;
We have been anointed by the Holy Spirit in our Baptism as priests, prophets, and kings and queens. This anointing has been strengthened at our Confirmation and is deepened whenever we fan into the flame the gift we have received through prayer (see Second Timothy 1:6). This anointing is a healing salve, and by it we can truly receive the gift of royal authority over sin in our lives. But it is not a one and done remedy. More than for any vaccine we need Holy Spirit boosters as frequently as we can receive them in order to sustain the new life and identity we have received from Jesus. The litmus test is that the closer we come to Jesus the more we recognize our need for him. The further we drift the more we think that we either don't need him or that he can't help. There are always greater levels of healing and progress which he himself desires to bestow. And they are truly good. May we have hearts that recognize that, and, like Matthew, may those hearts lead us to follow him ever more closely.
No comments:
Post a Comment