The Communities of New Skete

1 Kings 19:19-21; Rom. 1:7-17; Mt. 9:9-13

St. Matthew, like all his neighbors, hated the Roman occupiers. But being a really smart guy, he thought: I can make the best of this situation and live a decent and comfortable life. Let’s go with the realities! He knew how to write up reports, do accounting, keep records, and deal with people. So he sold out to the Romans.

But as a tax collector, he became alienated from his own people, the synagogue and God. He worked for Rome but did not have the rights of a citizen. Worse still, he was enmeshed in a system of oppression, which can turn abusive even to those who try to cooperate and do the best they can with it.

Along comes the well-spoken of healer and teacher Jesus, not from the establishment but just maybe destined to be an opposition leader. He claimed authority and yet was loved by the people. The powers that be were wary of Jesus and they could not buy or entrap him…

A feeling of liberation, a dream of personal freedom, probably buried in his heart for years, flares up in Matthew at the sight of Jesus. Then a look, a wave of the hand, a word and a call—and Matthew is shocked into attention. He sees how despicable his bondage is and how it turned him sour. In the next instant he gambles all for this chance to make something better of his life. Is it really possible to leave all that behind, begin anew, a bit wiser, and learn from the Master?
Jesus invites him and he freely responds. He joins the group of disciples and does not care whether they approve or hold his past against him, or are simply surprised.

He heard Jesus say that it is not those who think they are well and all set, but those apparently sick at heart and still searching, and the so-called sinners, who need the physician’s help or a teacher! Jesus peeled away the rotten bandages and the dead skin of the human wound, to expose the simplicity and beauty of the fragile human heart. Jesus was confident and courageous, a person of knowledge and depth, able to stand up for what he was doing and defend his friends. Truly altruistic, 100 percent un-self-centered, but God-centered and showing the love of God: He was not ethically self-righteous, or a representative of a school of divisive social or religious observances and of conventional arbitrary customs or oppressive standards. He offered to ordinary people the mercy of God instead of a menu of anger and guilt. He desired to shelter them, he said, as a hen with her chicks; he needed workers for his Father as would the harvester of ripe wheat.
In so many ways He says: I am the sign of God, I am the gate of heaven, I am the way to the truth, I am the persecuted and risen, I am with you always, I am the divine Spirit, I gather the marginalized and the poor and the rich. Come to me everyone who labors and is over-burdened… !
Jesus did not fulfill a promise of an easy new life for Matthew, but the life and growth of the soul and liberation of spirit which surpassed political freedom, and where, paradoxically, he said …you will find rest for your souls!

In a recent book called Power, Ambition, Glory, about leadership business secrets, Steve Forbes uses a Christian monastery as the perfect example of right attitude even for the business world: He says the secret is that the monks are not profit-driven people who happen to have a sideline interest in service for public relations purposes. Rather, they are in the business of serving God by serving one another and their neighbors. They are spiritual people who happen to run businesses; He points to charity, or what in its much larger sense the monks call caritas, which means living from the heart: it begins with a transformational change of heart, and this is what they join the monastery to find and what the monastic life provides.

This all overflows into their work and relationships with suppliers, customers, neighbors and visitors.

And so this brings us back to selflessness: the famous poet T.S. Eliot defined life as “one long purification of motive.” Forbes says for monastics this means keeping a watch on my own inner motivations; respecting deeper values until it becomes second nature; intense mutual training for each member and of new members, individual personal accountability; and finally using monastic practices to keep centered and alert within oneself in the middle of the distractions and necessities of life.

This is part of the work of Christ today and an attitude of following the gospel recorded in the name of Matthew: Matthew himself had finally discovered the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field.

Christ is in our midst.