SERMON/HOMILY FOR SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY 17TH FEBRUARY 2024

SERMON/HOMILY FOR SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY 17TH FEBRUARY 2024

Isaiah 59:9c-14; Ps.86; Luke 9:22-25

Only God truly understands and knows it all

Since the commencement of this holy season of lent and its message of repentance, have we being considering how the message affects us individually or are we focused on how it applies to another? Those who first and easily consider how others are to repent/do the right thing, end up never repenting or doing the right thing themselves. This was the case with the Pharisees and the Scribes in the gospel reading of today. Jesus had being going about preaching the message of repentance; but their minds were focused on how Jesus contradicted himself by eating and drinking with tax collectors. However, let us first understand the perspective of the Pharisees and the Scribes.

Now, the first encounter between Jesus and Levi the tax collector was not public and private. It was in this encounter that Jesus called Levi and Levi left everything, rose and followed Jesus. The call of Jesus was an invitation to conversion; the response of Levi was an acceptance of the invitation. It was based on this new found life that Levi made a great feast for Jesus. Levi was celebrating what Jesus did for him. The significance of the feast was not obvious to those who never witnessed the first encounter. It therefore means that only Jesus and Levi (and anyone they may have told), understood the context of the celebration.

If Jesus had not had the first encounter with Levi, the feast in his honour would have actually been scandalizing because it would not have been a celebration of conversion. Now, the Pharisees and the Scribes murmured because they never knew about the first encounter. Maybe they thought that Levi’s wealth was what attracted the presence of Jesus to the house. Yet they are not exonerated because if their disposition was on their own repentance and not on the doings of others, they would have been slow to accuse Jesus of hypocrisy; they would have sought clarification rather than gossiping.

We too need to be very careful. It is never wrong to be generous with fraternal correction but we must realize that it is God that entirely understands the situation of every person. In the life of everyone, only God truly know those who make effort to live good lives, those who are pretending, those who are fighting hard to overcome some negative habits from their childhood experiences, those who do what is wrong unconsciously, those who are experts in condemning in others the very wrongs they do, etc.

The point is, our stories are different; only God can tell how much effort we are truly making. He continues to encounter us in our fallen state, helping us to rise. How he does this for each person is always unique to the individual. So, let us be careful not to condemn what we have not understood. Know this: this God saves without apologies to anyone.