Hearth & Altar

Matthew was sitting at a customs post when Jesus walked by, which meant he was working - collecting money from his own people to hand over to Rome, and almost certainly keeping some extra for himself along the way. He was not admired for this. Tax collectors in his world were treated as traitors, lumped together with "sinners" as a matter of course. Jesus says two words to him. Follow me. And Matthew gets up, leaves the money on the table, and follows him.

Then something even stranger happens. Matthew throws a dinner party, and the only people he can invite are the friends he actually has - other tax collectors, other people the respectable crowd had written off. Jesus goes to that dinner. The religious leaders are scandalized, and Jesus tells them exactly why he came: those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.

Every family knows someone who has been quietly written off - a relative nobody expects to change, a neighbor everyone has given up on, a kid at school nobody sits with. Today's feast asks your family to look at that person the way Jesus looked at Matthew: not as a lost cause, but as someone two words away from an entirely different life.

• For our family, that we would see the people others have written off the way Jesus saw Matthew, we pray to the Lord.
• For everyone who has been reduced to their worst reputation and never given a second look, we pray to the Lord.
• For the grace to get up and follow immediately, without negotiating first, we pray to the Lord.
• For accountants, bankers, and everyone who works with other people's money honestly, whom Saint Matthew watches over, we pray to the Lord.

At dinner, name one person your family has quietly written off - someone whose situation everyone has decided is settled. Say the name out loud. Then pray for that person by name, and leave the conversation there.

Tell your children what a tax collector actually was in Matthew's world, because the word alone doesn't carry the weight it should. He was seen as a traitor to his own people, someone who got rich by squeezing money from his neighbors on behalf of an occupying empire. Nobody would have chosen him for anything important. Jesus chose him anyway, and did not ask him to clean up his life first - Matthew was still sitting at the tax booth when he heard "follow me."

Ask your children a direct question: if Jesus can call someone like that with two words, is there really anyone too far gone to be called? Let the question sit rather than answering it for them.