FOLLOW ME

July 4, 2025 Friday within the 13th week in Ordinary Time Year C Matthew 9:9–13 There are days I still wonder why God called me. I wasn’t the most prayerful, the most brilliant, or the most confident. Like Matthew, I was simply “there”—in my own little corner of life, doing what I knew, not even thinking I was worthy of something greater. But Jesus came anyway. Not with judgment, but with invitation. Not with a list of requirements, but with a gaze that saw deeper. And when I first heard that gentle whisper in my heart—“Jhack, follow me”—I felt like Matthew must have felt: surprised, undeserving, and yet, suddenly full of hope. It was not a call to perfection. It was a call to begin. Matthew’s story comforts me deeply because it reminds me that God doesn’t wait for us to clean up our lives before He calls us. He meets us in the middle of our mess, and He chooses us anyway. Matthew was a tax collector, a man probably used to dirty money and broken trust. And yet, those same hands once used to collect bribes became the hands God used to write the Gospel of Matthew. That’s how God works—He doesn’t erase our past; He transforms it. I think of the parts of my life I used to hide in shame—my fears, my failures, even my doubts—and now I see how God has slowly been using those very things to shape my ministry. It is never about being good enough. It is about saying yes. Discipleship, I’ve learned, is deeply personal. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” He is not giving an order—He is offering intimacy. He is inviting us not just to work for Him, but to walk with Him. Like Matthew, I left behind things when I answered that call—comfort, certainty, and even parts of who I thought I was. But in return, God gave me a mission far greater than I could have imagined. My limitations have become places of grace. My wounds have become doors of healing. And every day I wake up, I remember: I was not called because I was perfect. I was called because I was loved. Blessings Fr. Jhack