St. Hilary

Read: 1 Sm 9: 1-4, 17-19; 10: 1 Mk 2: 13-17

“When the scribes who belonged to the Pharisee party saw that he was eating with tax collectors and offenders against the law, they complained to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with such as these?’ Overhearing the remark, Jesus said to them, ‘Healthy People do not need a doctor; sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not the self-righteous.’” (Mk 2: 16-17)

The Pharisees considered Levi a corrupted sinner because he served the Roman government. Jesus, for simply sitting at the same table as Levi and the other tax collectors, was considered a sinner.

Jesus knows the deepest recesses of the heart and our true intentions. Not only did He not look down on Levi, but He called Levi to conversion and to become one of His most intimate disciples, he who is known to us as Matthew: the Apostle who wrote one of the four gospels.

Jesus can change any heart: Even a heart buried in sin, no matter how deep, serious, or habitual, if there exists some small bit of goodness and love for God. “Healthy People do not need a doctor; sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not the self-righteous.”

They are consoling words. All of us sinners, who fall because of our weakness into the clutches of sin, need Jesus as our hope.

Reflection and commentary

Psalm 22:10 “You have been my guide since I was first formed. To you I was committed at birth, from my mother’s womb you are my God.”

St. Hilary of Poitiers, d. 367; married and converted from paganism; a leading opponent of Arianism in the West; most noted work: De Trinitate.