Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B - 5th February 2012

"Follow Me"

On his way out of Capernaum, Jesus saw a tax collector by the name of Matthew seated at the tax booth. Matthew was doing his job which was one that made people despise him, for it classed him with the loan sharks and exploiters who grew rich on the backs of others. The scribes and Pharisees put him on the same level as public sinners, and criticized Jesus for being 'a friend of tax collectors and sinners' and of eating with them.

Going against every social convention, Jesus called Matthew to follow him and accepted the invitation to dine at his home. Later he would do the same with Zaccheus, the chief tax collector in Jericho. When questioned about his behaviour, Jesus answered that he had come to heal the sick, not the healthy, and to call not the righteous, but sinners. He gave the same invitation, in different words, to Paul on the road to Damascus.

But Jesus did not stop there. Throughout the centuries he has continued to call men and women of every people and nation. He still does so today: he comes into our lives and meets us in different places and different ways, making us hear once more his invitation to follow him.

He calls us to be with him because he wants to build a personal relationship with us, and at the same time he invites us to work with him for his great plan to renew humanity.

Our weaknesses, sins and limitations do not matter to him. He loves us and chooses us just as we are. His love will then transform us and give us the strength to answer his call and the courage to follow him as Matthew did.

For each of us he has a love, a plan for our life, a specific call. We become aware of it in our hearts through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Although revealed in different ways, it echoes the same words: "Follow Me".

How can we respond practically?

Our commitment, then, will be to give ourselves to God's will decisively - giving ourselves fully to the brothers and sisters we are called to love, or to our work, study, prayer, rest, to anything we have to do.

Let's learn to listen deep within us to the voice of God, which speaks also through our conscience. He will tell us what he wants from us in every moment, while we stand ready to sacrifice everything in order to do it.