Saint Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church Yrs 1 and 2 2026

Title

Physician for the Sick

Outline

My doctor regularly meets with patients unmasked

That includes patients who believe they are suffering from flu, COVID, RSV and the like. In part it is because from his experience of repeated exposure he knows he is likely immune - and he takes the vaccinations he recommends to his patients - but in part it is because his unmasked face is reassuring to patients. It communicates his warmth towards them and his lack of fear of what they may fear.

Now look at Jesus

He meets a man who was considered ritually impure, for because of his contact with Gentiles he was suspected of having contracted ritual impurity. The man has a good job collecting customs duties for the Herodian dynasty and is apparently well off. Jesus is not stand-offish telling him from a distance about his sins and need to repent, but rather invites him to the one thing needful, namely following him, being one of his company. And Levi follows, “leaving everything behind.”

Now Levi wants to honor his new Lord and gives a banquet for his friends, who naturally were people like him. The Pharisaic scribes who would have been welcome to observe, as was the custom, but who certainly would have been repulsed at the idea of partaking, critique Jesus to his disciples (not the triangling) for eating with tax collectors and sinners, i.e for exposing himself and presumably contract ritual impurity. Now Jesus elsewhere makes clear, especially in Mark, that food and drink cannot make one ritually impure, but he also knows that he is immune to the spiritual diseases these folks (and the Pharisees) may have had. But he does not boast in his immunity, so to speak.

Jesus makes a paradoxical reply

“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.” The healthy do not need a physician and the righteous do not need an evangelist (or, we might add, a confessor). “I have come to call sinners to repentance.” Now note how paradoxical this is. He does not confront the Pharisees with “You need repentance too,” or with “You too are sinners,” but leaves them to make their own conclusions. What is clear is that he is expressing the mercy of God that comes close to sinners, real and supposed, and leads them into his fellowship.

Peter Damian surely know and understood this

It is said that he was hard on his own sins and introduced the practice of flagellation into his monastic community, but he was easier on his monks, introducing the practice of a midday siesta to make up for the night office. He sought the repentance of sinners and welcomed the repentant. And when it came to the poor, even as Cardinal and bishop he usually had one or two at his table. He was not afraid to go among those who were sick or sinners, so that he could be the physician to their ills.

Thus Jesus leads us as he led St Peter Damian to first deal with out own sins and temptations so that we are relatively “immune”, as St Peter Damian did, and then reach out to those in need of a physician drawing them in any appropriate way into the fellowship of the Lord who called Levi.