He saw a man named Matthew sitting

4 JULY (Mt 9,9-13)

Jesus is free from all sinful structures that condemn a man in his imprisoned solitude. Nothing is sadder than the prison of sin. The prison of sin is one that follows, chases and persecutes you; it never leaves you, even for a moment. Prison is wealth. Prison is power. Prison is lust. Prison is drug. Prison is alcohol. Prison are the personal thoughts. Jail all enmities, conflicts, divisions, oppositions and schisms. Prison is all that separates man from man, even in a light, almost undetectable and invisible way.

Jesus came to destroy every prison man imprisons himself in and also imprisons his brothers, because he keeps them separate, very distinct from his life. At that time whoever had somehow entered into a business relationship with the Romans, under whose empire Palestine also lived, was considered by the scribes and Pharisees a public sinner, a renegade, a traitor to his noble people. This was a conviction that prevented any relationship. How rooted disgust was for the tax collectors is attested by the words of Jesus on the two men going up the temple to pray. For the Pharisee, the tax collector was the person to despise, hate, curse, remove from the heart and also from the sight. No communion with him.

What does Jesus do, instead? He calls a tax collector, Levi, to make him one of his disciples. This act is worth to the world of that time more than an entire Gospel. It causes more spiritual devastation that an atomic bomb. Sometimes suffices a gesture to flip secular mentalities of sin. I remember one day I walked into a room and saw a person who was widely considered to be more than a leper. Passing by, I greeted her and gave her my bible. It was a general frost. Who is then this person whom a priest does not consider and does not see as a leper? What is there in her that he sees and we do not see? I saw in Her a great prophet of the Most High. The others a person to be annihilated, trampled, destroyed and removed from their sight.

Our faith is in the revolutionary power of our concrete gestures. However, not of those gestures that are of fashion. These affect nothing. A concrete gesture is to act against the mentality and the structures of sin in our society. A concrete gesture is to break with certain church traditions that are the result of backward thoughts, conceived by man and never made his by the Lord. A concrete gesture is to give a new approach to our everyday life, bringing it back fully into the Gospel. A concrete gesture is to abandon the path of evil with force for advancing and staying on the path of the Word. A non concrete gesture is not the change of some protocol or some ceremony or some clothes or some other external sign. A concrete gesture is the gift of our hearts to Lord Jesus so that he fills it of his truth and his love.

As Jesus passed on from there, 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.”

The gesture of Jesus upsets the religious world of the Pharisees, scribes, and all the whitewashed sepulchres of the time. On the contrary, it is well understood by an army of sinners declared by the man. These see in that gesture the opening a large door. In their hearts a new hope is born. There is salvation even for them. They are not individuals without dignity only to be despised and denied. They are also human beings of possible redemption and salvation. They too can be the kingdom of God. A simple gesture changes the history of mankind. The gesture is the only word that speaks.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints, help us make concrete gestures.