Mk 2:13-17

VSS VPM

After the healing of the paralytic, Mark has Jesus going once again to the sea. The crowds follow him there, and he teaches them.

Jesus' teaching was different than the average teacher. He taught as one having authority, as one making absolute claims on his hearers. This puts Him in line with the best of the prophets. Upon hearing Jesus, one had to make a decision.

Not only Jesus' words, but Jesus' gaze was powerful. He stopped by the customs post, and there he set his gaze on Levi (Matthew), looking on Him with infinite Divine Love. After such a look, Matthew the tax collector had to make a decision; he had come upon the authority of Jesus that challenges one to the core. He immediately got up and followed Jesus. After a look, Matthew left behind a way of life, and began to share in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

Then Matthew welcomes Jesus into his home, where Jesus dines with tax collectors and sinners. He dined with them not so that they would stay sinners, but so that they would leave behind their former way of life and become Christian, become more authentically human ("well"). Mnsr Liugi Giussani used to say that "the Church is that place where true humanity, fashioned according to God's will, comes within everyone's grasp." This is one meaning of "those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do." Those whose humanity is broken, those who are tied up in their own sins, those who are oppressed by evil (which is a lack of goodness) and who admit it, these people need a Liberator, a Divine Physician. The Pharisees, because of their self-righteousness, could not welcome Jesus, and they did not go away changed. Only those who humbly acknowledged their need for Jesus could benefit from Jesus' Presence.

Lord, come into your Church, your Church of sinners, and transform us into saints. Look on us with infinitely compassionate love, as you looked on Matthew, so that we might imitate you and look this way on on our neighbor, and so hasten the coming of your kingdom! When you come to us in the Eucharist, restore our fallen humanity into the new creation that you begin.

Mary, Queen of all hearts, draw us into the life of your Church, the life which is Jesus, such that we want to lead new and exciting lives with Him. Help us to remember the gaze Christ has had for us so far, through all the mediums, so that we might be faithful to His love and imitate it with our neighbor.