Praising Tax Collectors, Prostitutes, and All Kinds of Outcasts

Today’s post is from Tulio Huggins, a theology student and writer, and one of New Ways Ministry’s regular contributors.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time can be found by clicking here.

“Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.’”

If September 27th did not fall on a Sunday this year, today’s liturgy would be honoring St. Vincent de Paul, but in a way, it act actually does.  Vincent de Paul was a French saint whose ministry to the poor and people enslaved by France made him the patron saint of Catholic charitable societies. As a child,  I’d unknowingly walk past his shrine multiple times going to and from church. For a year we lived in Paris, my father working in the embassy as the military attache. We weren’t Catholic, but Baptist, and our church met on Sundays in a primary school. We’d walk past the Chapelle Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, an unassuming church with a facade that blends in with the buildings it’s squished between. His wax-covered relics are high above the altar, and to reach the reliquary you have to climb stairs. 

Saint Vincent de Paul was the founder of the Vincentian family, a global federation of both lay and religious organizations. But, he was also a chaplain for the galley slaves of France. The galleys were places full of despair and disease. One of St. Vincent’s biographer wrote that the galley prisoners  were “huddled together in damp and filthy prisons, crawling with vermin, covered with sores and ulcers, brawling, blaspheming and fighting, the galley slaves made a picture suggestive only of Hell.” 

Visiting Paris, Vincent de Paul was horrified by the suffering conditions of those held in the galleys. They were so easily ignored:an injustice in the eyes of God. Vincent worked on caring for those in the galleys, providing them with love and nourishment while the rest of society ignored them. 

With the help of wealthy women, the ministry thrived and eventually, the French king, Louis XII, wanted to support him and made de Paul the Chaplain General of the Galleys of France. Through this power and influence, he reformed other galleys across France and ministered to these  outcasts of French society. A well-known (yet likely legendary) story of Vincent de Paul and a slave reveals more of his character. The slave wanted to go see his wife and children, despairing that he couldn’t. So, for a little bit, Vincent took on the form of a slave, switching with the man so that he could see his family for a little bit.

In today’s gospel passage , Jesusis speaking to the chief priests and elders of the people of Israel, telling them: 

“Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did.” 

Like dePaul, Christ hung out with society’s outcasts, those whom the chief priests and elders would never even think of associating with.

Here are the spiritual and cultural leaders of the people of Israel, the people set apart by the God that parted the Red Sea and led them out of Egypt. And then comes this Man, some say He is the Son of God. This Man points to the tax collectors, known for skimming money for themselves as they taxed their people on behalf of the Roman colonizer. This man, Jesus, proclaims, these social enemies have entered the kingdom of heaven. 

Next, he points to the prostitutes, women who were reduced to be objectsof scorn and rejection, accused of leading many to sin with their seductive glances, but who are now somehow sitting at the feet of Jesus. This prostitute is now a citizen of heaven. This new reality is world-changing. Those whom society has pushed to the outskirts as afterthoughts, those are the ones to whom Jesus has come. The Kingdom comes to them, and they enter. 

Our perseverance in the Church as LGBTQ folk, in the midst of the sufferings of homophobia, transphobia, and our closets, reflects this Kingdom reality. It is so easy to let the struggles we face get in the way of us seeing the God’s goodness, as well as seeing God as the Liberator of the oppression we experience. 

But, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our sufferings are not made in vain, and instead can and are being redeemed in light of the Cross. 

So, as we live in this new Kingdom of Heaven, let us let the guiding Spirit of charity and the prayers of St Vincent de Paul, the saint for those on the outskirts of the Church, continue to lead us towards the source of charity Himself on our path towards liberation and justice.

—Tulio Huggins, New Ways Ministry, September 27, 2026