💖 HOMILY - FEBRUARY 21 💖

First Reading - Isaiah 58:9-14

Gospel - Luke 5:27-32

The Word of God today reveals a God who draws near to the weak and calls them into new life. The readings move us from external observance to interior transformation, from exclusion to mercy, from routine religion to living relationship.

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah continues to unfold what true conversion looks like. If you remove oppression from your midst, if you stop pointing the finger and speaking wicked words, if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness. The message is clear: authentic worship is inseparable from justice and compassion. God promises guidance, renewal, and strength to those who care for others. He speaks of becoming like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. The image is beautiful. A life rooted in mercy becomes fruitful and life-giving, not dry or barren.

Isaiah also speaks about honoring the Sabbath, not as a burden but as a delight. When we make space for God and reorder our priorities around him, joy follows. Obedience is not meant to restrict life but to restore it.

In the Gospel, this restoration takes a very personal form. Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector, to follow him. Tax collectors were despised, seen as collaborators and sinners. Yet Jesus looks at Levi and sees not only his past but his potential. Levi rises, leaves everything, and follows him. Immediately, he hosts a banquet, inviting others like himself to encounter Jesus.

The religious leaders complain: why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus responds with words that reveal the heart of his mission. It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Jesus does not deny the reality of sin; he confronts it by offering healing. His presence at the table is not approval of wrongdoing but an invitation to change.

Dear friends, God’s mercy is active and transformative. He does not wait for people to become perfect before approaching them. He approaches them so that they may be changed. He asks us, too, to remove judgment, harshness, and indifference from our hearts. Just as Levi was called from his workplace into discipleship, we are called from wherever we stand into deeper communion with Christ.

Lent is precisely this movement: rising from old patterns and following Jesus more closely. It is allowing him to sit at the table of our lives, to heal what is wounded, and to send us out renewed.

When we show mercy, when we create space for God, when we respond to his call without delay, darkness gives way to light. And like Levi, we discover that following Christ is not loss, but the beginning of true joy.