DGeMs- Daily Gospel eMessage
Dear Friend in the Lord,
“Mercy, not Sacrifice”: In today’s Gospel, Jesus called Matthew the tax collector to be His apostle, while the Pharisees, ‘condemned’ him as a ‘public sinner’. Jesus proclaimed, “Mercy pleases Me; not sacrifice.” Ponder on, “When we condemn sinners, are we not being self-righteous, like the Pharisees?
Fr Philip Heng, S.J.
Matthew 9:9-13
As Jesus was walking on he saw a man named Matthew sitting by the customs house, he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
While he was at dinner in the house it happened that a number of tax collectors and sinners came to sit at the table with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?’
When he heard this he replied, ‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners.’