Saint Matthew

Matthew, also called Levi, was a publican, a collector of taxes at Capernaum for Herod Antipas. Publicans were despised by their neighbours as collaborators and cheats. “And when Jesus passed on from thence, he saw a man sitting in the custom house, named Matthew; and he saith to him: Follow me. And he arose up and followed him” (Matthew 9).

Matthew gave a banquet for Jesus, and many publicans and sinners came to it. When the Pharisees complained, Jesus replied, “They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill… For I am not come to call the just, but sinners.” Matthew’s call is the subject of Caravaggio’s great painting in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, which Pope Francis loved to visit.

From the earliest times the Church has attributed to him the first of the four Gospels, written above all for Jewish Christians. It shows again and again how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. It alone gives us the visit of the Magi, and it gathers Christ’s teaching into five great discourses, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). His emblem is a man, or an angel, because his Gospel opens with the human genealogy of Christ.

Traditions differ on where Matthew preached after Pentecost. Some say Ethiopia and some say Persia. He is honoured as a martyr, and his relics are venerated in the cathedral of Salerno in Italy.