I did not come to call the just, but sinners.

Fr Joaquim D'Souza sdb
19-01-08

In the Biographical Memoirs of Don Bosco there is an interesting childhood episode about John when he had just turned 4 years old. I will read the episode as taken from the first volume of the Biographical Memoirs:
“At this early age he would whittle small pieces of wood to make balls and sticks for a game called 'galla'....More than once, however, the ball, which some awkward or careless youngster sent flying towards hime, would strike him on the head or in the face. Screaming with pain, John would rush to his mother for comfort. At the sight of his tear-stanied face Margaret would exclaim: "Again? How do you manage to get into trouble every day?. Why do you play with those boys? Can't you see they're not very nice"?
"That's just why I play with them. When I'm around, they're not so nasty and they don't say bad words".
"But then you come home with a broken head".
"It was an accident".
"Very well. But don't play with them any more".
"But mum...."
"Did you hear me"?
"I won't play with them any more if you don't want me to. But when I'm there they do whatever I say and they don't fight".
"Ok, but that means you'll be coming back to have your head bandaged again. Be careful", she would conclude, shaking her head slowly. "Be careful because I know they are rough boys, very rough".
And John would not stir from the spot until his mother spoke the last word. She was reluctant to bar him from his games lest she prevent him in some way from being a good influence among his chums.
"Alright, you may go with them”, she would say.
(BM I Ch V, pp.38-39)
“So young yet so wise!” adds the biographer with an appropriate comment: “Already at that tender age John was dreaming of the day when he would be surrounded by mant young boys who would live with him, obey him, quietly and attentively listen to his words and become good. To him this was the only happiness possible on earth”.
These words seem to marvellously echo what the mysterious person would reveal to him as his mission in the dream when he was nine years of age – a mission given him by the Good Shepherd, so in the first place a holy mission. In today's Gospel Jesus puts it in ways that have no half measures: “I did not come to call the just but sinners” (Mk 2:17). According to the exegetes, this is one of the ipsissima verba (the very words themselves) of Jesus, which early tradition kept and passed on, since it expresses Jesus' understanding of himself, his intimate awareness of his own identity and mission. According to official Jewish pious practice, represented here by the Pharisees, Jesus lowers himself by eating with Publicans and sinners. The Pharisees' accusation is twofold: not only does Jesus not cast sinners aside, risking contamination by contact with those who are impure, but worse, he eats with them – and one knows what it means in Jewish culture to have conviviality, by way of association, approval and even communionwith those who eat with you.
Jesus' answer, “I came not to call the just, but sinners”, implies his mission as a servant-messenger sent to call guests to the wedding banquet in the King's name. Jesus sees his sharing a meal together with sinners in the light of his role as God's “eschatological messenger”, proclaiming the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, and in God's name bringing sinners the invitation to God's great wedding feast. It is to sinners that Jesus is sent to extend God's invitation.
But Jesus' eating with Publicans and sinners goes beyond mere proclamation and invitation to the eschatological banquet. The wedding feast has already begun. In the person of Jesus and his partaking at the table with sinners, the wedding banquet has already begun. He is the Bridegroom at the banquet. Proof of this is in his answer – in the passage that comes immediately after ours – to those who ask him why his disciples do not fast like the Pharisees or John the Baptist's disciples: “How can those invited to the feast fast when the bridegroom is amongst them? (Mk 2:19). God's mercy and salvation reaches out to sinners in communion and conviviality with him, of which eating together is a sign – something the Pharisees have well understood, but take in another sense.
There is a festive air then. There is joy and happiness where there is the salvific presence of Jesus, where one recognises one's sinfulness on the one hand and God's mercy in Jesus on the other, and accepts his offer of friendship. In this context the call of Matthew means the absolute gratuity of the offer on Jesus' part and on Matthew's part, the radical nature of his conversion: “and getting up, he followed him.” (Mk 2:14).
Here we touch on the central point of the entire Gospel, its fundamental and universal value: what Jesus came to proclaim is precisely that the forgiveness of sins is won not by some many difficult penances (as John the Baptist preached), as by being with Him, accompanying him and following him, that is, entering into communion of life with him, something which shocks the Pharisees of that time and of every age. If the “Kerygma” is an appeal to penance and conversion, more than just a moral situation because of a commitment to a life following him who alone saves from sin, then the kindness of Jesus and the welcome he extends to sinners is the Gospel in practice.
How could we not see in the life and providential mission of Don Bosco a reflection of what we have been saying about this event in Jesus' life? We have seen John's surprising claim when he was a tender child, almost a foreknowledge of his future destiny. We see a further claim in his more mature years. The episode in question comes from the early years of the Oratory at Valdocco and is described in the Biographical Memoirs (II 565-568). It is the “case of a fourteen year old, son of a drunken, anticlerical father. Coming to the the Oratory by chance, he got fully involved in the recreations, but refused to take part in the religious functions, because, given what his father had taught him, he had no intention of turning into “an idiot”. Don Bosco had won his confidence by being tolerant and patient, to the point where “over a few weeks the wild young lad had changed his habits and ways of thinking”. The biographer comments: “At that time and many times over the following years that scene repeated itself often, Don Bosco winning over many reluctant and I would say brutal hearts through patience and prudent charity, bringing them back to God's grace, and thus making them happy!” (BRAIDO Pietro, Prevenire non reprimere. Il sistema educativo di don Bosco, Roma: LAS, 1999, p. 219)
Is this not the Salesian spirit as traced out in summary version in art. 11 of our Constitutions: the spirit that finds its model and source in the very heart of Christ himself, apostle of the Father, and that reproduces certain elements of the figure of the Lord: gratitude to the Father for the gift of a divine vocation offered to all men; predilection for the little ones and the poor; zeal in preaching, healing and saving because of the urgency of the coming of the kingdom; the preoccupation of the Good Shepherd who wins hearts by gentleness and self-giving; the desire to gather his disciples into the unity of brotherly communion?
Is this not what the Strenna for 2008 proposes: animating presence amongst the young, especially minors and those who are marginalised – a presence that welcomes and builds communion; a presence that educates and evangelises; a presence that accompanies and becomes a vocational proposal, – all traits which shine out at the table which Jesus shares with Matthew? But so that this type of presence can come about even more in our own time, it needs people and communities who start out again from Christ and set a high standard for their own renewal. The Lord would want these Salesian Spirituality Days to help us promote this process of renewal, so our hearts may become places and spaces where the little ones, the poor and the marginalised discover the mercy and grace of God.