Friends,
our Gospel for today is the simple but magnificent story of the
conversion of Matthew, called Levi by Luke. I urge you to read it in
Luke 5:27-32 and meditate upon it this week, for it's about you.
There
is a splendid painting of this scene by the late Renaissance artist
Caravaggio. Matthew sits at his tax collector booth in all of the finery
of sixteenth-century Italy. He is surrounded by his wealthy friends and
by all of the paraphernalia of tax collecting. Across from him stands
the Lord, wrapped in shadow. He stretches out his hand toward Matthew,
as a shaft of light falls on the tax collector's table. It calls to mind
the hand of God from Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, suggesting that
conversion is like a new creation.
Matthew
points his finger at his own chest and looks incredulously at Jesus, as
if to say, "you're calling me? The likes of me?" Yes! Jesus calls whom
he wills, and Paul tells us in his letter to Timothy that he wants all
people to be saved. Even those of us who feel a million miles from him,
perhaps sunk in a lifestyle that has alienated us from God, God calls
us, just as he did that first-century tax collector.
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