{"id":6635,"date":"2020-08-16T15:47:22","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T05:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6635"},"modified":"2020-08-16T15:47:24","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T05:47:24","slug":"hope-that-overcomes-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/hope-that-overcomes-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope that Overcomes Despair"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Hope that Overcomes Despair<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Yacoub Magdy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Luke\n5:27-39<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message\nof this gospel is hope. For any despair, any despondency, this is the answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope\nbecause of the restraint of Saint Matthew. Saint Matthew was restored to his\noriginal rank that was a Levite. We need to understand what a publican is and\nwhat a Levite is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Levite\nbelongs to a group of people that the Lord chose to be consecrated in the\ntemple. They lived in the temple, they don\u2019t work and the temple covers all\ntheir needs. An entire extended family would be sustained in this way. Levites\nhad an extremely high rank, like priests and deacons of the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately,\nit is not made known how he became tempted to pursue riches. He applied for the\nrole of publican of the Roman empire. A publican collects one tenth of the\nmoney the people earn and gives it to the Roman enemy. This one tenth should be\ngiven to the temple so that he, and the other Levites could live. He didn\u2019t\nchoose this path, but chose to work for the Romans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publicans\nget help from the Romans and are given police officers so that they may collect\nmoney from the people. Each district had to give the Romans a certain amount of\nmoney each year. Each publican was able to take as much money as they saw fit\nfrom the people, and they had police officers to protect them. You can imagine\nthe hate the people had for the publicans, especially one that was originally a\nLevite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be\nconsidered a priest in Egypt that loved money and devoted his efforts to collecting\nmoney from the Christians to the ruling authority (which in Egypt, would be\nIslam). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this\nman had something different in his heart. He did not feel it was his place to\nbe a publican. At some point, he realised that he was not born to be a\npublican. There was still hope that he could return to the temple, that he\ncould repent and be restored once more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This day is\na feast of hope, because we all have a similar outlook. Sometimes it isn\u2019t\nmoney, but other worldly pursuits that interfere with our search for Christ. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I have hope? Can the Lord restore me?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lord\nwas passing by Levi and all his riches surrounding him. No one can befriend a\npublican, he is not allowed to eat with people because he is considered defiled\namong the Jews. Only his colleagues that are publicans like him. He was\nboycotted from the temple. Great despair would have arisen within him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lord\nsaid two words to Matthew, \u201cFollow Me,\u201d and he left all his money and in great\njoy, he knew he was restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is our\nhope \u2013 that one word from the Lord can unite us back to our Beloved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following\nhis restoration, Levi held a party and invited many people. The catering and\ncost would be extremely great. He could not invite the Jews, but he had to\ninvite the sinners, publicans like him. How dare he make a feast of the Lord?\nThe Lord entered into a house that was considered defiled. Maybe he heard of Zacchaeus,\nand how the Lord dined with him. The difference was that the Lord invited\nhimself to Zacchaeus\u2019 home. He may have heard this, and this gave him courage\nto invite the Lord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christ went\nto his house that day and dined with sinners and publicans. This angered the\nJews and they saw this as betrayal. Jesus responded to them saying, \u201cI have not come to call the righteous, but\nsinners, to repentance<\/em>\u201d (Like 5:32). He came to restore the sick to\nrepentance. He is One of them. Today is the feast of hope. The church, in her\nwisdom, prepares for today before another great feast \u2013 the Transfiguration.\nHow can I see the glory of God when I pursue the world? Jesus came to restore\nus to our original rank as His children. The desires of the Lord entrap us in\nsin and this is the day I say to the Lord, \u201ctell me as you told Matthew. When\nyou tell me to follow You, I will follow You all the days of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hope that Overcomes Despair Adapted from a sermon by Fr Yacoub Magdy Luke 5:27-39 The message of this gospel is hope. For any despair, any despondency, this is the answer. Hope because of the restraint of Saint Matthew. Saint Matthew was restored to his original rank that was a Levite. We need to understand what … Continue reading “Hope that Overcomes Despair”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[94,391,93],"class_list":["post-6635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-despair","tag-follow","tag-hope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6638,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635\/revisions\/6638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}