A Reflection for Saturday after Ash Wednesday

In today’s gospel, Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector, to follow him. In first-century Israel, just like nowadays, people did not like taxes—or those who collected them. Tax collectors were considered traitors who worked for the foreign rulers of Rome and often demanded extra money to fill their own pockets.

Perhaps we would share in the bewilderment of the Pharisees to see Jesus, a holy man, dine in the presence of tax collectors and other sinners. But, as Jesus reminds us, his mission is not to heal the healthy, but the sick. He does not call the righteous to repentance, but the sinners. As our Holy Father, Pope Francis, affirms, such is the mission of the Church: to be “a field hospital that takes in the weakest people.”

Based on this message, it is easy for us to want to charge headlong into the service of the tax collectors of our day, those the world has disregarded as unclean, sinful or treacherous. This inclination is good. It is, indeed, one of the Church’s most important tasks. In this effort, however, we should not blind ourselves to a more important truth: that we, too, are sinners. We, too, are in need of God’s mercy. We, like Levi, have to answer Christ’s call for repentance. To do so, we—tax collectors or otherwise—have to go to the sacrament of Confession.