St Matthew was one of the 12 Apostles, and in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles he always appears in the list of them. He was one of the four evangelists, the authors of the four Gospels, and his symbol as an evangelist is the image of a man because, perhaps, according to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, he started his Gospel with a genealogy of Jesus Christ, thus emphasising the human family.
In the list of the Apostles in the First Gospel, which is attributed to him, St Matthew is very precisely called “the tax collector”.
The only time that St Matthew is mentioned individually is when he is called by Jesus to be an Apostle. The call of St Matthew, the theme of a wonderful painting by Caravaggio in the Church of St Louis of the French in Rome, took place in Capernaum, close to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus was a permanent guest at the house of St Peter.
In Chapter 9 of the Gospel of St Matthew, his call by Jesus is recorded in these words: “As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me’. And he rose and followed him.” St Mark and St Luke also include this incident in their gospels but refer to the man as “Levi”, though it is the same person they are talking about.
The choice of Our Lord to include St Matthew among the 12 is significant because of the saint’s profession. As a tax collector, or publican, Matthew – whose name in Hebrew means “gift of God” – would have been seen by the Jewish people of that time as a despised instrument of Roman oppression, a man who would have been regarded as a public sinner worthy of the same level of opprobrium as, say, an adulterer or a prostitute. He was a man not only willing to handle money considered impure because of its provenance from occupying forces foreign to the people of God but also because he was cooperating with the extortion of arbitrarily determined tributes from that occupying authority.
In a general audience of 30th August 2006, Pope Benedict XVI expounded in great detail just what the call of St Matthew tells us about the mercy of God.
“Jesus does not exclude anyone from his friendship,” Pope Benedict said. “Indeed, precisely while he is at table in the home of Matthew-Levi, in response to those who expressed shock at the fact that he associated with people who had so little to recommend them, he made the important statement: ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’ The good news of the Gospel consists precisely in this: offering God’s grace to the sinner!”
Benedict suggest that “in the figure of Matthew, the Gospels present to us a true and proper paradox: those who seem to be the farthest from holiness can even become a model of the acceptance of God’s mercy and offer a glimpse of its marvellous effects in their own lives”.
Another reflection prompted by the Gospel narrative, Pope Benedict continued, is that St Matthew “responds instantly to Jesus’ call: ‘he rose and followed him’. The brevity of the sentence clearly highlights Matthew’s readiness in responding to the call. For him it meant leaving everything, especially what guaranteed him a reliable source of income, even if it was often unfair and dishonourable. Evidently, Matthew understood that familiarity with Jesus did not permit him to pursue activities of which God disapproved.
“The application to the present day is easy to see: it is not permissible today either to be attached to things that are incompatible with the following of Jesus, as is the case with riches dishonestly achieved.”
St Matthew in effect fulfilled the invitation of Our Lord made later in the Gospel which he authored. In Chapter 19 Jesus said: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me”.
“This is exactly what Matthew did,” explained Pope Benedict. “He rose and followed him! In this ‘he rose’, it is legitimate to read detachment from a sinful situation and at the same time, a conscious attachment to a new, upright life in communion with Jesus.”
The tradition of the ancient Church agrees that St Matthew is the true author of the first Gospel. References to this are included in the writings of Bishop Papias of Hierapolis in Frisia and in those of Eusebius who stated that “when Matthew, who had first preached among the Jews, decided also to reach out to other peoples, he wrote down the Gospel he preached in his mother tongue; thus, he sought to put in writing, for those whom he was leaving, what they would be losing with his departure”.
The Gospel of St Matthew in its original Hebrew no longer exists but the Greek form that the Church still possesses also resonates with the voice of the publican who became an Apostle and who was keen to preach God’s saving mercy to the world. As we approach the forthcoming Year of Mercy, which will be opened by Pope Francis in December, we can help perhaps reacquaint ourselves with the mercy of God by immersing ourselves in the Sacred Scripture recorded by the hands of his this man, to meditating upon it anew, and also to learn how to rise up and follow Jesus with courage, determination and without hesitation.