Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
September 21, 2022
Daily Reading from the USCCB: Matthew 9:9-13
There are two aspects of the life of St. Matthew that are instructive for us. First he was not a respectable person. Tax collectors were agents of Rome–exploiters of their own countrymen. They were not the kind of people that upright Jews wanted to associate with.
Secondly, when Jesus called him he came. “Matthew got up and followed [Jesus],” the reading says. Matthew left his living behind–unseemly and inappropriate as it might have been. He joined the company of Jesus.
These two aspects of Matthew’s life speak to us. We have become followers of Jesus like Matthew. And our call to follow Jesus is not due to our own special worth or virtue, but simply to the generous will of the Lord.
