Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 25th February 2023

Each one of us who is a disciple of Jesus has heard him say, “Follow me,” and like Levi in today’s Gospel passage, we have left everything and followed him. Now by everything, I don’t mean our families and loved ones or even our work, friends and homes. What we have left behind are other gods, spiritual guides and ways of life. We have followed Jesus by entering into a personal relationship with him through prayer and meditating on his word, receiving his sacraments and putting his teaching into practice though love and obedience, faith hope and charity.

 

​Here is the passage from Luke, (Lk 5: 27-32).

“Jesus noticed a tax collector, Levi by name, sitting by the customs house, and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And leaving everything he got up and followed him.

  In his honour Levi held a great reception in his house, and with them at table was a large gathering of tax collectors and others. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples and said, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus said to them in reply, ‘It is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance.’”

​

​Levi was a tax collector, employed by the Roman state, and so considered to be a traitor to Israel and the Jewish religion. I’ve often wondered what the scribes and Pharisees were doing in Levi’s house at a great reception in honour of Jesus and no doubt sitting at table with Jesus and his disciples, when all they could do was criticise Jesus for mixing with sinners. What were they doing? Even so, the reply of Jesus has become proverbial, even if people no longer understand what his meaning is. The virtuous and the good have no need of Jesus, for by their own efforts they can enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus has come, like a physician, to help the weak, those who need the doctor, and sinners to repentance. Are we conscious of being those sinners and that Jesus, in calling us to follow him, has called us to repentance? Lent is a good time to remember that we are sinners called to repentance as well as to discipleship by Jesus.