Jesus and the sinners

The gospels tell us how Jesus used to approach tax collectors and sinners. He entered their houses and began to eat with them. The Pharisees were amazed at this acceptance and relationship with sinners. But Jesus, guessing their thoughts, told them: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick... I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

In every encounter with these disreputable people, rejected and singled out by society, the look that Jesus leaves on the sinner is a look of compassion and mercy. It is not a look that judges, condemns or humiliates, but a call to conversion, to start over. "Go in peace... and sin no more," Jesus tells those he forgives.

We too are sinners, we have failed. Therefore we are also invited to experience that mercy that comes from God, through the examination of conscience, the Sacrament of Confession. Let us trust in God's forgiveness and mercy, but let us also do our best not to continue sinning.

P. Tarcisio