DGeMs- Daily Gospel eMessage
Dear Friend in the Lord,
“Self-Righteousness”: In today’s Gospel, Jesus reprimanded the Pharisees for being self-righteous and hypocritical, in criticising Him for dining with tax-collectors and sinners. Ponder on, “Do we have such Pharisaic attitudes? Could we be blind to our own graver sins?”
Fr Philip Heng, S.J.
Matthew 9:9-13
As Jesus was walking he saw a man named Matthew sitting by the customs house, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
Now 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.’