In today's first reading, Amos 8: 4-6, 9-12, Amos confronts the people, saying to them: "When will the new moon be over," you ask, "that we may sell our grain, and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat? We will diminish the containers for measuring, also add weights, and fix the scales for cheating! We will buy the lowly...[person] for silver, and the poor...[person] for a pair of sandals...."
Amos is speaking to us today, to those who are diminishing the value of money, who fix the minimum wage, who buy infants, children, adolescents and young adult women and men, girls and boys, for sexual exploitation and slave labor. Yes, the lowly are being purchased for silver. The Lord's response in Amos 8: 4-6, 9-12, I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentations....I will make them mourn as for an only...[child] and bring their day to a bitter end."
In the Gospel, Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector, who also was cheating the poor of his day. "Follow me." And Matthew got up and followed Jesus. When his disciples confronted Jesus about eating with sinners and befriending sinners, His response was: "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."
We never need to lose hope, no matter how sinful our past might be. God is a merciful God. He stills calls us to follow Him and will always be inviting us to repent of our sinful ways, to leave sin behind and embrace the Gospel. The response is ours to make. How we answer will either lead to freedom that only God can give or to "a bitter end." Which will you and I choose?
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