The Face in the Window

July 4: Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Amos 8:4-6, 9-12; Psalm 119:2, 10, 20, 30, 40, 131; Matthew 9:9-13

To surrender to Jesus expressing himself through us in ministry.

The Face in the Window

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Matthew 9:13

Matthew (called Levi then) was a social outcast. He sat in his booth and collected taxes for the enemy when the fishermen brought their catch up from the lake. No one would talk to him.

He wasn’t a “practicing Jew.” He didn’t keep the rules. His friends were other tax collectors and “those known as sinners,” who like himself, “disregarded the law.”

Matthew had heard about the popular preacher who was announcing the reign of God. But he never went to hear him. Whatever the message was, it wasn’t for him. He had excluded himself from all that.

Then one day he saw a face at the window of his booth. It was Jesus. No annoying blame. No unwelcome sympathy. Just, “Follow me.”

He “got up and followed him.”

That’s all it took: someone who accepted him as he was and offered him friendship; was even willing enlist him in what he was doing. Matthew never turned back.

This is priesthood: offering “our bodies as a living sacrifice,” so Jesus can see through our eyes, speak through our lips, and act through our bodies to heal and enliven with love.

PRAY: “Lord, I give you my body. Use me to show everyone what you feel about them.”

PRACTICE: Be sure that the faith and hope Jesus has in people inspire the attitude you express toward them.