Stretcher Bearer

It is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance.
Lk.5:31,32

In calling Matthew the tax collector and then attending a party of tax collectors and sinners, given in his honour, Jesus unequivocally announces who he came for. The sick, the sinner, the bottom of the heap. 

Jesus clearly attracted broken people, the social outcasts. In the last two thousand years the Church has lost that charismatic appeal. I know in my pre-christian days, the Church was the last place I felt drawn to in my brokenness. "They'd just make me feel worse!" 

People are aching for the healing that only Jesus can give. I love Pope Francis' vision of the Church as a hospital in the field of battle. I want to be a stretcher bearer in that sort of Church. 

Jesus, help me be an agent not of judgement but of compassion that people may be drawn to you, the great physician.