Penance and Mercy

Saturday, February 21st Readings Reflection: Saturday after Ash Wednesday

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear of the calling of St. Matthew, also called Levi. The scribes and Pharisees objected to Our Lord’s dining with the tax collectors, and in His reply, Christ gives us a beautiful reminder of the purpose of the Lenten season: “They that are whole, need not the physician: but they that are sick. I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance” (Lk 5:31-32 DRB).

This call to penance comes just as we begin our Lenten observances, reminding us that we are all in need of the Divine Physician’s healing. At Easter, we will celebrate His triumph over sin and death, whereby He has broken the bonds that have held us captive and prevented us from drawing closer to Him. Through our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we are rooting out—by God’s grace—those things that draw us away from Him.

In one of his Lenten meditations, St. Thomas Aquinas writes of the slavery of sin: “[T]he devil…as far as was in his power, held man, whom by his lies he had deceived[,] bound in slavery” (Aquinas’s Lenten Meditations). When we believe the devil’s lies, he binds us once again in slavery and keeps us from responding to divine grace. One of the greatest lies that the devil tells us is that we are beyond all help, even that of God. He wants us to think that our sins and bad habits define us.

The devil tries to make us forget our dignity and identity as sons and daughters of God. Like the Prodigal Son, we can squander our inheritance through sin, but our merciful Father is always willing to return it to us when we repent and seek His forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance. In the words of Pope St. John Paul II, “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son” (Homily, 17th World Youth Day).

As we begin this Lenten season, let us take the call of St. Matthew as our inspiration as we pray and do penance for our sins. Just as St. Matthew’s sins were not too great for Our Lord to forgive, so too our sins—no matter their number or magnitude—are never too much for God to forgive. Our God is not vindictive, desiring the death of sinners; rather, the Scriptures tell us, He is loving and merciful, longing for us to return to Him with repentant hearts and a desire to change our lives. He gives us the grace to do this through the sacraments of His Church. This Lent, may we frequently receive the sacraments in order to grow closer to God through the life of grace, rejecting the lies of the devil and instead trusting in the infinite mercy of our God, Who loves us to the point of death.

Public domain