Word of the day

A reading from the Book of the prophet Isaiah
Is 58:9b-14

Thus says the LORD:
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined homesteads.”

If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
If you call the sabbath a delight,
and the LORD’s holy day honorable;
If you honor it by not following your ways,
seeking your own interests, or speaking with maliceB
Then you shall delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

From the Gospel according to Luke
Lk 5:27-32

Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him.
Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house,
and a large crowd of tax collectors
and others were at table with them.
The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying,
“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

This is the same thing we do when we do not pay our people fairly. In so doing, we take away from our penance, from our acts of prayer, of fasting, of alms-giving; we accept a ‘bribe’: the bribe of vanity, of making ourselves seen”. But “that is not authenticity; it is hypocrisy”. Thus, “when Jesus says: ‘when you pray, do so in secret; when you give alms, sound no trumpet; when you fast, do not look dismal’. It is the same as if he were to say: ‘please, when you do a good deed, do not take the bribe of this good deed, it is only for the Father’. (Santa Marta, 3 March 2017)