Our message for this day in Lent is short and to the point: Jesus came to call sinners! The other part of the short message is that we are all sinners. If anyone thinks that he is not a sinner then he is simply mistaken, and he has simply cut himself out of the benefits of the redemption won by Jesus. No one would really want to do this if they fully understood what was going on here.
The first reading today tells us two ways in which people sin – apparently they were sinning in the days of the Prophet Isaiah as well. But the reading is all about how God wants to bestow abundance and blessings on his people – once the sin is cleared away! This is the entire gospel message of Jesus. Repent, so your sins can be cleared away, so that you can receive the abundant blessings of the forgiveness of your sins and everlasting life in heaven! The passage from Isaiah reads:
Remove from your midst false accusation and malicious speech; stop lying about and to one another, stop all varieties of mean and hateful speech about one another, stop gossiping, stop tearing people down. If you do this, and in place of it if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, if you do what you can for others in need in your own day in age, in your own circumstances on a regular basis – then light shall rise for you in the darkness and the gloom shall become for you like midday: the Lord will guide you always and give you plenty when you need it; he will renew your strength and you will be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.
He also says that if you keep the Sabbath, the Lord's Day (Sunday for us, as Catholics), and not follow your own pursuits on that holy day, if you call that day a delight, and hold it as honorable – then you will find your delight in the Lord and he will raise you on high with joy and blessed assurance!
We must remember in this Holy Lenten Season that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but he takes great pleasure rather in his conversion, that he may live and be blessed with an abundance of the good things of life!
Jesus called Levi / Matthew, a tax collector – a sinner – and Matthew dropped everything immediately and followed Jesus. Let us do the same today! Let us follow Jesus into everlasting life!
Today, if you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts!
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