The Memorial of Saint Peter Damian
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help, and he will say, 'Here I am.' "If you take away from among you the yoke, finger pointing, and speaking wickedly; and if you pour out your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light will rise in darkness, and your obscurity will be as the noonday; and the Lord will guide you continually, satisfy your soul in dry places, and make your bones strong. You will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters don't fail. Those who will be of you will build the old waste places. You will raise up the foundations of many generations. You will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of Paths with Dwellings. "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy of the Lord honorable, and honor it, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you will delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father;" for the Lord's mouth has spoken it.
Hear, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my soul, for I am godly. You, my God, save your servant who trusts in you.
Be merciful to me, Lord, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to the soul of your servant, for to you, Lord, do I lift up my soul.
For you, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, abundant in loving kindness to all those who call on you. Hear, Lord, my prayer. Listen to the voice of my petitions.
After these things he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office, and said to him, "Follow me!"
He left everything, and rose up and followed him. Levi made a great feast for him in his house. There was a great crowd of tax collectors and others who were reclining with them. Their scribes and the Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?"
Jesus answered them, "Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
Saint Peter Damian was an eleventh-century reformer who challenged corruption in the Church with fierce love, calling both clergy and laity back to authentic holiness. His feast during Lent reminds us that true reform always begins with our own hearts.
Notice how Levi responds to Jesus's call with stunning immediacy—he leaves everything and throws a party. There's something almost reckless about his joy, inviting all his questionable friends to meet this rabbi who saw something worth calling in a despised tax collector. The Pharisees are scandalized, but Jesus cuts to the heart of the matter: he came for the sick, not the healthy.
This creates an uncomfortable question for us. Do we see ourselves as sick and in need of healing, or have we convinced ourselves we're among the healthy? The Pharisees' problem wasn't that they were worse sinners than Levi—it was that they couldn't admit their need for a physician.
Isaiah offers the antidote to this spiritual blindness. When we stop pointing fingers and pour ourselves out for the hungry and afflicted, something shifts. Our own darkness becomes like noonday. We become "repairers of the breach"—people who mend what's broken rather than widen the divisions.
Consider how this plays out on an ordinary Wednesday. The colleague who irritates us, the family member whose choices we judge, the stranger whose lifestyle we question—what if these encounters are invitations to practice the medicine Jesus came to bring? What if our willingness to sit at table with the broken and struggling, starting with our own brokenness, is how light rises in darkness?
What would change if we approached each day asking not "Who needs fixing?" but "How do we need healing?" Where might God be calling us to throw our own version of Levi's inclusive feast?