Call the Levites: Matthew, Mary, and the mercy that calls

**Quote:**

> “And he said to them, ‘It is not those who have sound health who need a doctor, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)

**Text:**

The calling of Matthew (Matthew 9:9-13) is one of the most theologically rich scenes in the Synoptic Gospels. A tax collector, a socially disdained figure, ritually unclean due to contact with Gentiles and polluted money, a collaborator in Roman occupation, is called to Jesus’ table and then welcomed into his home with his fellow tax collectors and other “sinners.” The reaction of the Pharisees, “Why does your Master eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (v. 13), represents the reaction of purity logic against mercy logic. Jesus’ response, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 13), is one of the most radical self-statements in the Gospel about the nature of his mission.

The text from Hosea cited by Jesus, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6), appears twice in Matthew (9:13 and 12:7) and is central to Matthew’s theology: concrete mercy manifested in relation to those who suffer takes precedence over ritual purity that closes itself off. This principle, *hesed* (“loyal love,” “mercy”) over *zebah* (“ritual sacrifice”), is a recurring theme in the Israeli prophetic tradition, which repeatedly placed ethical relationship above unconverted worship (cf. Amos 5:21-24; Isaiah 1:11-17; Jeremiah 7:22-23; Micah 6:6-8). Jesus aligns himself with this tradition and radicalizes it: mercy is not merely preferable to hypocritical sacrifice; it is the form of sacrifice that God desires.

**I. The Calling of Matthew: To the Sinner**

The brevity of the narrative of Matthew’s calling, “Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ He got up and followed him” (Matthew 9:9), masks a radical rupture. Matthew abandoned not just his job but an entire social identity: that of a tax collector who was also rich (relative to the average level of Galilean society), disdained (excluded from the synagogue and many social relations), and part of a power system (Roman and Herod Antipas administration). “He got up and followed him” signifies a metanoia, a conversion, only explicable by Jesus’ personal authority.

The immediate sequence, the feast in Matthew’s home with “many tax collectors and sinners,” reveals the logic of conversion in the Gospel of Matthew: grace received immediately overflows into sharing. Matthew did not convert and retreat from his former world ascetically; he invited Jesus into his world, making Jesus the center of his former social circle. This logic, “the grace I have received, I must share with those who were once mine,” is the logic of mission that Matthew himself narrated in Matthew 10 (the mission discourse) and that Barnabas embodied (cf. Acts 64). Conversion is not flight from the world but transformation of the world from within.

The fact that Matthew, the evangelist, narrates his own vocation with such brevity, without psychological drama, without an interior description, without justification, is in itself theologically significant. In writing his Gospel, Matthew does not place himself at the center; he puts Jesus forward. His conversion is described in two verbs: “he arose and followed,” which is precisely what matters. Not the psychology of conversion, nor the elaboration of the inner change, but the act of decision and following. This sober narrative style itself is a fruit of conversion: the humility of one who knows that the focus of the story is not himself.

Comparing Matthew’s vocation with that of the first disciples (Mt 4:18-22) reveals a constant: in every case, the call is direct, the response immediate, and the text does not describe deliberation. This is not to say that following Christ had no costs. The fishermen left their nets and father. Matthew gave up economic security and social identity, but the encounter with Jesus created an attraction that made the decision instantaneous. This immediacy is not irrationality; it is the recognition of an authority that resonates deep within a person and makes hesitation secondary.

II. “Mercy, not sacrifice” (Hos 6:6)

Jesus’ use of Hos 6:6 in response to the Pharisees is a re-reading of the prophetic tradition with wide implications for Christian theology of liturgy and worship. The prophets of the eighth century—Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah—systematically criticized a worship that had become a substitute for moral conversion. In their view, the multiplication of sacrifices, feasts, and offerings was a way to “buy” divine benevolence without transforming the structures of injustice that God detested. The prophetic critique was not against worship but its subordination to *hesed*, loyal love manifested in justice, mercy, and care for the poor.

Jesus radicalizes this tradition by applying it to his specific table with sinners. The “sacrifice” preferred by the Pharisees is ritual separation from the unclean, compliance with purity laws that ensure community sanctity. The “mercy” Jesus prefers is an open table with those excluded by purity, contact that ritually pollutes but is a sign of love without boundaries. This preference is not religious anarchy; it is consistent application of the prophetic principle known by the Pharisees but not applied to this case.

Christian eucharistic theology inherits this tension and seeks to resolve it: the Eucharist is both “sacrifice” (a representation of Christ’s unique sacrifice on the cross) and “mercy” (an open table that includes sinners in communion with Christ’s Body). The question of who can access the Eucharistic table, which has run through Church history from Corinth (1 Cor 11:27-29) to contemporary discussions about communion and irregular situations, is precisely this tension between “sacrifice” (the sanctity of the table that cannot be profaned) and “mercy” (a table Christ opened for sinners). The principle of Hos 6:6, cited by Jesus, serves as a permanent criterion for this discernment.

## Mercy of Hosea and the Mother of Mercy

The mercy of Hosea, *hesed*, finds its root in the tragic yet profoundly loving marital relationship lived by the prophet himself: God loved Israel as Hosea loved Gomer, his unfaithful wife. He continued to love her even amidst her infidelity. This unwavering love, which persists despite betrayal, serves as a model for divine mercy. Mary, the *”Mother of Mercy”*, is the female embodiment of this enduring love: the mother who stood at the foot of her Son’s cross, condemned, and did not abandon him when human logic would have justified flight, is the icon of *hesed* described by Hosea and Jesus.

### III. Mary and the Logic of Preferential Mercy

The *”preference for the poor”*, a theological concept from Latin America in the 1970s-1980s that Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI integrated into the Church’s social teaching, finds its most explicit biblical basis in the *Magnificat*. *”He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty-handed”* (Luke 1:53): God’s preference for the poor is not a contingent political choice but a constant in His action throughout history, according to Mary. The *Magnificat* represents Mary’s interpretation of the Incarnation. The Son of God did not enter this world in Herod’s palace but in a manger; He was visited first by shepherds before the Magi; and as a refugee, He fled to Egypt.

Mary’s mercy in devotional tradition is specifically preferential towards those *”the logic”* of religion would exclude. The *Salve Regina* prayer, sung by *”poor children of Eve”*, who *”groan and weep”*, not by the wealthy satisfied. The Loreto Litany invokes Mary as *”refuge for sinners”* and *”help for Christians”*, not as a reward for the virtuous. Popular devotion to Mary, stronger in social and geographical peripheries than among elites, intuitively reflects this preference: Mary is with those society marginalizes, just as Jesus sat at table with tax collectors.

The connection between Marian mercy and Matthew’s vocation lies in logic: the same mercy Jesus practiced when calling Matthew is the mercy Mary represents in popular devotion. Jesus *”calls”* tax collectors because *”he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners”*. Mary intercedes for sinners because she is our *”advocate”*, not a judge who condemns but a defender who presents the causes of those who cannot defend themselves before their Son. The logic of mercy in both cases is the logic of love that transcends merit.

The sanctuary of Fátima, where Mary’s message was given to three children from a peripheral village in Portugal during a time of war and crisis, exemplifies this preference: Mary does not appear in political or ecclesiastical centers but on the periphery. This constant in Marian phenomena (Guadalupe to Mexican indigenous people, Lourdes to a poor, illiterate teenage girl, Fátima to shepherd children) is no coincidence: it reflects the logic of the *Magnificat* and the call to Matthew. God reveals His mercy by preferring those the world scorns.

## IV. The Open Table: Eucharist and Communion for Sinners

The banquet of Matthew, where Jesus eats with “many tax collectors and sinners,” is a proto-Eucharistic type: a table presided over by Jesus, open to the excluded, that causes scandal among the “righteous.” The patristic interpretation of this scene, particularly in John Chrysostom and Ambrose of Milan, saw in the banquet of Matthew a prefiguration of the Eucharist: the Lord’s Table, which, at its institution, was presided over by one who knew there were traitors among his guests and did not exclude them.

The question of the Eucharistic communion for sinners, those in “irregular situations,” those who have committed grave sins, those who have wandered away, is one of the most sensitive issues in contemporary church pastoral care. The principle of Hosea 6:6 (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) and the scene in Matthew 9 (“I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners”) offer a theological direction that does not automatically resolve all concrete pastoral cases, but which establishes a clear path: Jesus’ Eucharistic table is primarily a remedy for sinners, not a reward for the righteous.

Mariology contributes to this reflection with the image of Mary at the Cenacle (Acts 1:14): Mary was with the disciples in the prayer that preceded Pentecost, and these disciples included Peter (who denied Jesus), those who had fled from Gethsemane, and those who had doubted the Resurrection. The presence of Mary at the Cenacle with those who had failed is a sign that mercy does not wait for perfection before admitting to communion: she sustains the community of the imperfect who await the gift of the Spirit. This image of the Cenacle (Mary, Mother of Mercy, in the midst of flawed disciples) is the model for the Church that Jesus founded at Matthew’s table.

“I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” This phrase of Jesus is both the most comforting and the most demanding in the Gospel. Comforting because no tax collector, no sinner, no person with a difficult past is beyond Jesus’ call. Demanding because whoever identifies with the “righteous,” whoever believes they do not need mercy, whoever feels secure in their own righteousness, places themselves outside the reach of Jesus’ call. The only position from which Jesus’ call can be heard is the position of Matthew before the encounter: seated at his post, conscious of who he was, still untransformed but open to “rise and follow.”