Get Up and Go!

A Reflection on the Conversion of St Matthew (Matt 9:9-13)

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Matt 9:9-13)

     What is the most important word of the Mass? It is the last exhortation, “Go”! We often hear another descriptor that follows like, “and announce the Gospel of the Lord” or, “and glorify the Lord by your life,” or my favorite, “the Mass is ended”. Each of these descriptors all apply to the one word, “Go!”  In other words, you have been fed at the altar of the Word proclaimed through Sacred Scripture and you have received the Word incarnate at the altar of sacrifice, now, do something! Even the word Mass is derived from the Latin, “mittere”, to “send” or “missio” which means “dismissal”.  There is hidden genius in referring to our worship, Mass, with the word, “Go”, because that is exactly what the Lord wants us to do.

     In the Gospel today, we hear of the calling and conversion of St. Matthew. Jesus calls Mathew with an imperative, “Follow me”. St. Matthew’s response, the only right response in the presence of God before him, is to immediately get up and go follow Jesus. Like Matthew, in Holy Mass, we too stand in the presence of God, with Jesus pulsing through our being, and are commanded to, “Go!”  So, we also must get up and follow Him from behind the walls of our Church and into the world. That is exactly where Jesus wants us to be.

“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.” (Matt 9:12 NABRE)

     In the Gospel, after calling St. Matthew, Jesus went and broke bread at table with tax collectors and sinners. We too are sent out after Mass with Jesus to proclaim the Good News, hope, in the midst of sin and despair.  This is what Jesus is telling the Scribes and Pharisees as well.

“Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  (Matt 9:13 NABRE)

     The Scribes and Pharisees often held themselves pridefully apart from “sinners” in order to remain ritually pure and, in particular for the Priests, able to offer sacrifice at the temple. Jesus is telling them, and telling us, that the effect of our being nourished in the worship of the living God is not the “ends” but the “means to an end.” The “end”, or goal, is to go and become a conduit of grace, God’s mercy and love, into the world. That is the purpose of the dismissal in Mass.

    Pope Francis stated in a General Audience to the faithful gathered in St Peter’s square,

“God always desires to build bridges; we are the ones who build walls! And those walls always fall down!” (Pope Francis, General Audience 30 Sept 2015)

     The building of a bridge means we must leave the walls and “go”.  Pope Francis also went on to say that St Junipero Serra, whose feast we celebrate today, is the perfect example of “going”.  He said,

“St Junipero shows us the path of joy: to go forward and share with others the love of Christ. This is the way of the Christian, as well as of every man or woman who has known love: not to keep it to oneself but to share it with others.” (Francis 30 Sept 2015)

So, what are you waiting for? Get up and go!

End Notes

Image from Bernardo Strozzi: The Calling of St Matthew. ArtBible.info. (n.d.).
Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.artbible.info/art/large/1064.html

New American Bible. Revised Edition (NABRE). Washington, DC: The United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011. Print.

Pope Francis. “General Audience Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 30 September
2015.” Audiences of Pope Francis, 2013–2015, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican
City, 2016.