WEDNESDAY REFLECTION
Midweek Reflection
22nd September 2021
Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Apostle and Evangelist, St Matthew. Being a tax collector for the Roman invaders, he was not much loved by the people of Capernaum where he lived. His call to follow Jesus is recounted in Mark and Luke as well as in his own Gospel. Mark and Luke call him Levi and Mark adds that he was the son of Alpheus. He was almost certainly well-to-do. How many others in Capernaum could afford to hold a champagne dinner for Jesus and his companions!? Was Matthew’s desire to encounter Jesus a sudden thing? Possibly not. Jesus was already well-known and was living in Capernaum at the time of Matthew’s calling. He would have been aware of his presence and perhaps the idea of vocation had already begun in his inner-most thoughts.
Although Matthew’s is counted as the first Gospel, he was not the first to be called. His own account of his calling is fairly brief. Jesus is passing the customs house, calls him and he follows. The scene is familiar to us from Caravaggio’s painting which probably many of us have seen in the French church of St Louis in Rome. But there is another painting which pre-dates Carravaggio by almost a hundred years and it is by Vittore Carpaccio. He captures him standing by the temple, in the very act of his work, and Jesus comes along with his retinue and takes him by the hand. We don’t know all that much about Matthew after that. It is thought that he may have preached in Judea and then moved to Ethiopia, Partha and Persia. He is venerated as a martyr but where and when that took place, we do not know. His chief claim to fame, therefore, is his Gospel which was almost certainly written in Aramaic for the Jewish people. His Gospel is the only one to recount the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem, the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod and the flight into Egypt. So, all in all, his was a rather impressive CV!
Monsignor Monaghan
