Homily for Saturday after Ash Wednesday

In today’s Gospel passage, the scribes and the Pharisees ask why Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. For them, eating with tax collectors and sinners was to risk being contaminated by them. For them, it was better to keep oneself separate from such people in order to preserve one’s own moral health.

However, Jesus wasn’t concerned about that. Rather than the sin of others infecting Him, He knew that His goodness, the goodness of the Father in Him, would infect or transform them.

The LORD is never reduced by our failings; rather, we are always enriched by His holiness. That is why the LORD does not separate Himself from us, even when we might be tempted to separate ourselves from Him, because of what we have done or what we have failed to do. The LORD is always ready to sit with us, to break bread with us, to enter into communion with us, so that, in our weakness, we might draw from His strength, and in our many failings, we might draw from His goodness and love.+