When school children play dodgeball or any other team sport, it usually involves picking teams. Usually, the two best players are appointed captains of the opposing teams, and they take turns picking players for their teams. The ones who are picked first are proud, but the fewer there are to choose from, the more embarrassing it becomes for them. And almost always, in the end, there is one left who no one wants on their team…

Today’s Epistle also speaks of being chosen and called. It is a divine calling that is higher than being selected even for the best team in any sport. It is a calling that is higher than being awarded the Nobel Prize or being elected as a senator or president. It is a calling to live and walk as a child of God, bearing witness to Him and His grace in word and deed.

How could we know something that surpasses knowledge? Because that is what St. Paul says: “…to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” This is possible only when we are filled with “all the fullness of God” – the fullness that is His love. A love that requires one to comprehend its “breadth, and length, and depth, and height.” Isn’t it remarkable that love is shaped like a multidimensional cross?

When we preach the gospel, we must think not of glory or profit, but only of the salvation of souls. Our aim must not be to make followers for ourselves, but to lead sinners to Christ, that they may find forgiveness and life. We must direct the eyes of all people to where our own eyes are directed: to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto us, and we unto the world.

Matthew was a publican, a tax collector. Publicans, whose job it was to collect taxes from the people, were not government officials, but private entrepreneurs who provided a tax collection service to the state. They had to earn their own money, and this often led to extortion and abuse of power – a temptation that is easy to condemn… and easy to give in to.

It is sometimes said that all people are for sale, it just depends on what’s on the price tag. Most people, most souls, are unfortunately sold for a rather low price: we have probably all been in a situation where something seems so desirable that we are tempted to give up for its sake even something that is priceless.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” writes Saint Paul in the Epistle of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and continues with the proclamation of how Christ humbled Himself, gave up everything that rightfully belonged to Him as the Son of God, and became obedient to the point of death on the cross in order to redeem us by giving Himself for us.