Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Luke 5:27-32
“I have not come to call the just, but sinners to repentance.”
Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the customs office. And he said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving behind everything, rising up, he followed him.
And Levi made a great feast for him in his own house. And there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others, who were sitting at table with them.
But the Pharisees and scribes were murmuring, saying to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
And responding, Jesus said to them: “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who have maladies. I have not come to call the just, but sinners to repentance.”
What do the Fathers say?
St John CHRYSOSTOM. Here note both the power of the caller, and the obedience of him that was called. For he neither resisted nor wavered, but forthwith obeyed; and like the fishermen, he did not even wish to go into his own house that he might tell it to his friends.
But our Lord refutes all their charges, showing, that so far from its being a fault to mix with sinners, it is but a part of His merciful design.
As if He should say, So far am I from hating sinners, that for their sakes only I came, not that they should remain sinners, but be converted and become righteous.
St BASIL. He not only gave up the profits of the customs, but also despised the dangers which might occur to himself and his family from leaving the accounts of the receipts uncompleted.
St AMBROSE. But He calls those sinners, who considering their guilt, and feeling that they cannot be justified by the law, submit themselves by repentance to the grace of Christ.
But he who receives Christ into his inner chamber, is fed with the greatest delights of overflowing pleasures. The Lord therefore willingly enters, and reposes in his affection; but again the envy of the treacherous is kindled, and the form of their future punishment is prefigured; for while all the faithful are feasting in the kingdom of heaven, the faithless will be cast out hungry.
At the same time also is shown the difference between those who are zealous for the law and those who are for grace, that they who follow the law shall suffer eternal hunger of soul, while they who have received the word into the inmost soul, refreshed with abundance of heavenly meat and drink, can neither hunger nor thirst.
Pope St Leo the Great on Almsgiving – “What we diminish in our own spendings must be turned to the benefit of the poor. Let the heart of the needy rejoice over that which the belly of the Christian has given up. Let the person who fasts understand that he is being fed by the very act of feeding another. Let us be particularly mindful of those who are in prison, the sick in their beds, and the strangers in their wanderings.”