The Reckoning of Mercy
MASS Os justi
LESSON Ezechiel 1: 10-14
GOSPEL St Matthew 9: 9-13
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
St Matthew knew about accounts. He knew what was owed, what was collected, what was entered, what remained outstanding. His place was the custom-house at Capernaum, a busy point of trade and passage on the Sea of Galilee, where commerce and political power touched ordinary life. A publican did not enjoy an honourable reputation among the Jews. Taxation served rulers dependent upon Rome; the system was open to abuse; and those who worked within it were easily regarded as collaborators and extortioners. We need not accuse Matthew personally of sins the Gospel does not record. It is enough that his profession placed him among a class so despised that “publicans and sinners” could be named together.
That is where Christ finds him. Not after Matthew has first made himself respectable, but in the middle of the life by which he is known: “Jesus saw a man sitting in the custom-house, named Matthew.” St Bede, commenting upon this passage, gives us the famous phrase miserando atque eligendo: Christ saw him by having mercy upon him and choosing him. The gaze of Christ is not cold inspection. He sees the whole truth about Matthew, including what Matthew himself cannot yet see: what grace can make of him.
Then comes the command: “Follow Me.” Matthew rises. No speech is recorded, no explanation, no bargain. St John Chrysostom remarks upon the promptness of his obedience. The answer is given with his feet. And there is something important here for any Christian who has imagined that conversion is chiefly a matter of feeling differently. Grace certainly touches the affections, but conversion becomes real when it takes bodily form in what one actually does.
St Thomas teaches that grace does not destroy nature but heals and perfects it. God moves the will according to its nature, so that the act is truly ours and yet truly made possible by grace. In Matthew we see this plainly: Christ calls; Matthew freely rises; beneath the human act lies the divine initiative.
The Pharisees object when publicans and sinners afterwards sit at table with Our Lord. Christ answers: “They that are in health need not a physician: but they that are ill.” He does not deny the illness. That would not be mercy. A physician who refused to distinguish sickness from health would betray the patient. Mercy begins in truth, because only what is acknowledged can be healed. Yet the illness is not the whole identity of the sick man. Matthew has a past, but Christ does not permit the past to become a prophecy of the future.
This is why the Church places before us today the vision of Ezechiel. The four living creatures move beneath the impulse of the spirit; their appearance is like burning coals; their faces and wings are lifted up; “every one of them went straight forward”; they “ran and returned like flashes of lightning.” Then the Gospel shows us a man sitting at a desk. The contrast is magnificent. The stationary man becomes apostolic. The one occupied with earthly accounts is taken into the movement of the Gospel.
The traditional symbolism of the Church assigns to St Matthew the face of the man, because his Gospel opens with the human genealogy of Jesus Christ. He begins with names, generations, kings and exiles: the human record into which the eternal Son enters. Yet Ezechiel’s man has wings and is surrounded by fire. Human nature is not discarded; it is elevated.
The Introit therefore fits St Matthew beautifully: “The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom, and his tongue shall speak judgment: the law of his God is in his heart.” Before Matthew can become an Evangelist, the law of God must cease to be something merely external and become inward. His mouth will speak because his heart has first been conquered. Christian witness is never merely the transmission of correct information. Truth must pass through the soul before it can be given with authority to another.
There is also a striking appropriateness in the Gospel Providence entrusted to Matthew. A man accustomed to reckoning begins his sacred book with a reckoning of generations. But the genealogy arrives at a point where ordinary human calculation fails: the Virgin conceives, and God enters the account from above. Matthew, who once lived amid claims, dues and payments, becomes the Evangelist of a salvation no man could purchase.
That bears directly upon our own lives. We too keep accounts, and not only financial ones. We remember kindnesses given and not returned; injuries suffered; gratitude withheld; apologies never made. Some accounts remain open in the heart for years. Matthew’s Gospel will later teach us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” To forgive is not to call injustice just, nor to restore trust where prudence forbids it; but it is to refuse to make another person’s unpaid debt the permanent measure of our interior life.
At the same time, mercy does not cancel justice. If we ourselves owe, then conversion may require payment. Money wrongly retained should be restored. A reputation damaged by our words should, where possible, be repaired. A promise neglected should be honoured. A duty evaded should be resumed. Matthew’s former world of accounts is not abolished by grace; it is subjected to God. Christianity enters wages, possessions, speech, promises, family obligations and the obligations of friendship.
Most holiness is worked out in such material. Providence ordinarily reaches us through the duty already present: an ageing relative who needs time, a child who needs patience, work that ought to be done honestly, a difficult apology, a prayer that must be protected from trivial things. Matthew did not know the entire road when he stood up. He knew what fidelity required at that moment.
Grace does not require us to become imaginary people. God ordinarily sanctifies the person He actually created. Practical competence, hospitality, professional experience, money, time, influence, even knowledge acquired through mistakes can be brought under charity and used well. The question is whether what has been entrusted to us has been placed at God’s disposal.
The Gospel then gives us the words: “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.” These cannot mean that sacrifice is abolished, for the Church proclaims them in the very act of offering the Holy Sacrifice, and today’s Secret asks that St Matthew’s prayers commend “the offering made by Thy Church.” Our Lord condemns sacrifice severed from conversion: religion performed externally while the heart remains untouched. True sacrifice is the creature’s return to the Creator; and the perfect Sacrifice is Christ Himself, in whom mercy and oblation are one.
Matthew’s own life comes to possess this sacrificial shape. He leaves one table and opens another, receiving Christ and bringing his former companions within hearing of Him. According to the ancient ecclesiastical tradition preserved in the Roman lessons, his apostolate carried him eventually to Ethiopia, where his preaching was crowned by martyrdom, slain at the altar while offering the sacred mysteries. The historical details come to us through the Church’s hagiographical tradition; their spiritual meaning is exact. The man whose life once revolved around receiving ends by giving himself.
The Postcommunion draws the feast to its sacramental centre. The Church asks that what we have received may benefit us “as a healing remedy.” The Physician of the Gospel is not merely remembered; He acts in His sacraments. In Penance, what sin has wounded is judged and absolved. In Holy Communion, the life of grace is nourished by Christ Himself. The remedy must be received because the patient is still being healed.
The Collect admits that there are things “we ourselves cannot obtain” and asks that they be granted through Matthew’s intercession. That petition should be made with some precision today. Perhaps there is a restitution still outstanding, a reconciliation which needs the first honest word, a duty repeatedly deferred, or a talent buried because using it would involve inconvenience. Perhaps what is needed is less dramatic: fidelity to prayer, patience in the home, honesty in work, care over speech. Grace does not ask us to live someone else’s vocation. It asks for the conversion of this life.
The Offertory says of the Apostle: “O Lord, Thou hast set on his head a crown of precious stones: he asked life of Thee, and Thou didst grant it to him.” Matthew once knew how to calculate advantage. The Gospel taught him another arithmetic. What is hoarded contracts the soul; what is surrendered to God is enlarged. He loses nothing worth keeping when he rises from the custom-house. He receives a Gospel, an apostolate, a martyr’s crown, and a name spoken at the altar of the Church until the end of time.
May St Matthew obtain for us that same practical docility to grace: not sentiment without amendment, not good intentions without justice, but a life steadily brought into order beneath Christ. Then mercy will not remain an idea we praise. It will have entered the account and changed the sum.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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