In his work “The Rule,” Saint Augustine writes, “Strict adherence to religious rules cannot save a person without the prior intervention of divine mercy.” According to Saint Augustine, the law exposes human weakness, while mercy provides the healing grace required to fulfill it. He prioritized fraternal charity and love over blind rigidity, and championed mercy as God’s greatest attribute.
The gospel today affirms the same teaching when Jesus welcomes Matthew to be one of his disciples. In calling Matthew, a tax collector and assumed sinner, to follow him, Jesus values mercy more than strict religious rules. Matthew responds promptly and positively by leaving his booth, where he collected taxes, to join Jesus. He leaves his old life behind right away and follows Jesus. He even goes over and beyond to invite Jesus and his disciples to a dinner, where other tax collectors and social outcasts gather. To the dismay of the Scribes and Pharisees, Jesus also accepts the invitation; he joins in with all other people considered unfit by the religious leaders to celebrate a fellowship. By doing so, Jesus highlights the fact that his ministry reaches into the messy margins of society to provide transformation.
Whereas the Pharisees valued ritual purity and separation from sin, Jesus chose relationship and presence instead. He notes that healthy people do not need a doctor, but sick people do. Jesus, in a way, compares spiritual brokenness to physical illness to explain why he seeks out the lost. He prefers a heart of compassion and love over rigid compliance. By dining with those discredited by society, Jesus seeks to draw close to all people, revealing the depth of God’s mercy. God’s mercy, because it is unconditional, does not wait for people to change but
empowers people to change. Jesus’s way of life, his style of table fellowship, is a response to God’s desire for mercy.
In the person of Matthew, we experience what total transformation looks like:
He chose to completely follow Jesus and left behind all his past life, but he never left his pen, as the joke goes.
Saint Augustine postulates that true mercy is not a free ticket to do as one pleases, rather it requires an inward conversion of heart and a sincere attempt to realign one’s life with
God’s moral order. Sometimes we are confronted with our unwillingness to show mercy toward those judged as outcasts, rebellious members of our families and friends. We are to be merciful as God is merciful. Mercy has been extended to us in various ways; we, too, are called to transform ourselves into a new life with God’s grace.
We know that Jesus’s goodness has the power to transform our lives for the better, so we are called to transform others by our own goodness. We are all to be agents of the Lord’s transforming love and mercy. For God asks of us “mercy,” not” sacrifice,” openness and welcome rather than exclusion on grounds of ritual purity.