Having mercy and choosing

Feast of St. Matthew

St. Bede talked about the scene in which Jesus called Matthew. 

Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, “follow me.”

The phrase 'having mercy and choosing' is hard to translate since it penetrates the manner in which Christ looked at Matthew. It is a two-step condition for calling him: “having mercy” and “choosing”. 

Yet it also captures a truth of every vocation, the fact that the call is always the Lord’s complete initiative and that no one merits the vocation. 

Rather every vocation is a divine work of mercy reflecting our reality before God, and His love despite our sinfulness. 

The Calling of St. Matthew painted by Caravaggio, Church of Saint Louis of the French, Rome, Italy

In 1953, on the feast of Saint Matthew, another man was called to follow Jesus.  The young Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis), at the age of 17, experienced, in a very special and intimate way, the loving presence of God in his life. 

He went to confession and felt his heart touched by the mercy of God. It changed his life. At that moment, he also felt God’s call to the priesthood and religious life as a Jesuit.  

In memory of that holy event in his life, Pope Francis chose as his episcopal (and later papal) motto the words miserando atque eligendo (“having mercy and choosing”).

In an interview, Pope Francis spoke of that event in these words: “In that confession, something very rare happened to me. I don’t know what it was, but it changed my life. I would say that I was caught with my guard down… It was a surprise, the astonishment of an encounter. I realized that God was waiting for me. From that moment, for me, God has been the one who precedes (to guide me)… We want to meet Him, but He meets us first.”

After his election as Pope, he held the Year of Mercy as mercy was to be the central theme of his pontificate. In 2016, in an ongoing series of Wednesday catechesis on mercy, Pope Francis spoke about the calling of St. Matthew and had this to say,

Jesus not only invites a tax-collector, a public sinner, to be his disciple, but also sits at table with him, thus scandalizing the Pharisees.  The Lord then explains that he has come to call not the righteous but sinners. The calling of Matthew reminds us that when Christ makes us  his disciples, he does not look to our past but to the future. We need but respond to his call with a humble and sincere heart. Jesus invites us to sit with him at the table of the Eucharist, in which he purifies us by the power of his word and by the sacrament unites us ever more deeply to himself. Citing the prophet Hosea, he tells us that what God desires is “mercy, not sacrifice”, true conversion of heart and not merely formal acts of religion. May all of us, acknowledging our sins, respond more generously to the Lord’s invitation to sit at table with him, and with one another, with immense gratitude for his infinite mercy and saving love.