Not come to call the righteous, but tax collectors and sinners: Mary, refuge of sinners.

Quote:*”Non enim veni vocare iustos, sed peccatores.”* (Not that I came to call the righteous, but sinners.) – Matthew 9:13Text:The Saturday of the thirteenth week in Ordinary Time, in liturgical tradition, is Lady Day, a Marian memory day popularized by medieval devotion as a day for contemplation and prayer dedicated to Mary. The Gospel pericope from this Saturday’s ferial liturgy (Matthew 9:9-13), the vocation of Matthew and the banquet with tax collectors, offers an unexpectedly precise key to Mariology on this day: mercy that calls the excluded, a feast that opens doors to those the religious system locked out, and Mary as the face of that never-closing mercy.The vocation of Matthew has a brief yet powerful structure: Jesus passes by, sees Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth, says “Follow me,” and Matthew “gets up and follows him” (Matthew 9:9). No hesitation, no discernment process described, no explanation. Jesus’s “Follow me” immediately produces Matthew’s “get up and follow.” This swift response has in Matthew its own autobiographical commentary: the Gospel narrating this vocation was written by the same Matthew who got up and followed. The Good News we proclaim was written by a sinner turned saint, which says something about the nature of the Good News.I. The Tax Collector Who Got Up: Vocation as DisruptionMatthew was a tax collector, a revenue collector working for Rome. This profession made him impure according to Jewish law (contact with Gentiles, potential for fraud, collaboration with the occupier) and socially excluded from the religious community. Tax collectors were placed, in rabbinic casuistry, in the same category as “sinners,” those permanently estranged from the covenant. For Jesus to call a tax collector into the group of twelve was, from the perspective of Jewish religious sensitivity, an institutional scandal: disciples should be chosen from the pure, not the impure.Matthew’s “get up and follow him” (Matthew 9:9) echoes Peter’s mother-in-law’s response to Jesus’ healing (“Get up and walk”) – Matthew 8:15. Both instances depict a cure/call by Jesus immediately producing service, movement, new life. The bed the paralytic carried as he left (Matthew 9:7) and the tax booth Matthew leaves behind (Matthew 9:9) are the “plows” that are burned up, the tools of his former life left behind without hesitation when Jesus calls. Vocation is not a slow process of inner deliberation culminating in a difficult decision; it’s an immediate response to an immediate call with the disruption it entails.The feast that follows, “while Jesus was sitting at table in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also at table with Jesus and his disciples” (Matthew 9:10), is the gesture of incorporation into the new community. Matthew doesn’t keep his conversion as a private fact: he opens his home, invites his friends (other tax collectors and sinners), and the feast becomes the space where the new covenant begins to take shape. Matthew’s table anticipates the Eucharist table: the place where the excluded are welcomed, where distinctions between pure and impure are overcome by love that invites all.

The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth: A Mariological Reflection

The *Visitation* of Mary to Elizabeth shares a structural framework with the calling of Matthew: Mary, like Matthew, received a call (the *Anunciation*) and then responded by rising and going (Luke 1:39, “anestousa”). Just as Matthew left his tax collection post, Mary left her home in Nazareth. Similarly, while Matthew brought Jesus to the homes and tables of the marginalized, Mary brought Jesus to Elizabeth’s house and to the “*banquet*” of the *Visitation*, where John leaped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb. The immediate follow-up action, without hesitation, is a common trait shared by Matthew and Mary.

II. “Why does your Master eat with tax collectors and sinners?”: The Scandal of Mercy

“Why does your Master eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matthew 9:11) – the question from the Pharisees to Jesus’ disciples reveals the social code Jesus was challenging. Sharing a meal implies communion. Eating with unclean people makes one unclean. The Pharisees erred not in the logic of purity, but in applying it to Jesus, whose contact with the unclean purifies rather than contaminates (as seen with the leper in Matthew 8:3).“Do not those who are well have need of a physician, but those who are sick?” (Matthew 9:12) – Jesus’ response to the implicit accusation is a wisdom saying. Just as doctors are where the sick are, not where the healthy are, so too should it be with Jesus. The logic of Jesus’ mission reverses ritual purity norms: it’s not the healer who must distance himself from the sick to remain pure; rather, it’s the healer who goes to where the sick are to cure them. This reversal is the principle of Incarnation: God did not withdraw from humanity to maintain “pure” separation from human contamination. He entered humanity to heal it from within.“Learn this, that mercy I desire, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13, quoting Hosea 6:6) – this citation from Hosea is programmatic for Jesus’ ethical teachings in Matthew. The “sacrifice” contrasted with “mercy” in Hosea 6:6 is not the liturgical sacrifice itself, but ritual observance detached from love for one’s neighbor. Jesus did not abolish ritual; he abolished ritualism that uses ritual as a shield against the excluded ones. “Mercy,” as Hosea claims, refers to Hebrew *hesed*, loyal love that does not abandon.Mary’s Marian devotion to “mercy” finds its biblical foundation in this text: Mary is “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), filled with God’s *hesed*, and as such can offer refuge to those the formal religious structure has made feel excluded – divorcees, those who have left practice, those feeling unworthy to enter by the main door. Mary is the side door that welcomes when the main door seems closed, not because the main door should be closed, but because her mercy does not impose preconditions.

III. Mary as Refuge for Sinners and the Marian Saturday of Mercy

“Refugium Peccatorum,” or Refuge of Sinners, is one of the titles of the Loreto Litany that most directly captures the role Mary has attributed to her through Marian devotion over the centuries. The “refugium” is the place of shelter before judgment, like the “cities of refuge” of the Old Testament (Num 35:11-15) that protected involuntary homicide until trial. Mary, as “refuge,” is the one who welcomes the sinner before he can present himself to the Sacrament, the space of transition between estrangement and formal reconciliation.The Marian Saturday as a day of reflection on sin and mercy has a long history of devotion. The practice of the “first five Saturdays” (promoted by devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary after Fátima) associates the Marian Saturday with examen of conscience, confession, and reparative communion. When correctly understood, this practice is not ritualism; it is the weekly structure that invites the Christian to examine where he has been this week, like Matthew at the tax collection post, and to “rise and follow” Christ anew.Matthew’s table, open to publicans and sinners, is a foreshadowing of the Sunday Eucharist. The Marian Saturday is the day of preparation for that table: the day to “go and learn what mercy means” (Mt 9:13) as an attitude to receive the Eucharistic gift of Sunday. Mary, who was present at the Last Supper (according to tradition) and at the Cenacle (according to Acts 1:14), is the model for this preparation: she arrived at the Sunday of Resurrection and Pentecost through the Holy Saturday, the day when mercy was not yet visible but already real.“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners,” remains one of the most liberating texts from the New Testament for those who feel excluded. Mary, who sang “he has filled the hungry, and sent away empty the rich” (Lk 1:53), understood this logic from the beginning: those who come with full justice do not have a place to receive. Those who come empty-handed have all the space. The Marian Saturday is the day to empty one’s hands, recognize one’s spiritual poverty, and be ready to receive the Sunday gifts of the Eucharist and the Gospel that Jesus brings to the table of sinners.