- Era
- First century
- Region
- Galilee and later mission fields preserved in varying traditions
- Category
- Apostle and evangelist
- Feast
- November 16
Jump to The Man at the Tax Booth A Table Given Back to God Evangelist and Missionary Why the Church Remembers Him What His Life Asks of Us
The Man at the Tax Booth
Matthew’s call begins at a table built from compromise.
Tax collectors in Roman-occupied Judea and Galilee were widely despised. They served an imperial system, handled money considered religiously compromising, and often profited by demanding more than was owed. The Gospels do not catalogue Matthew’s individual offences, so we should not invent them. His occupation alone, however, placed him among people his neighbours regarded as collaborators and sinners.
Jesus saw him sitting at the tax office and said, “Follow Me.” Matthew rose and followed.
The brevity is almost unsettling. We are not told what calculations passed through his mind or what arrangements he made. The decisive fact is that when Christ called, Matthew left the table that had defined him.
A Table Given Back to God
The next scene takes place at a meal. Many tax collectors and sinners sit with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees object, Christ answers, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” He then commands them to learn the meaning of God’s word: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Matthew’s former circle becomes the first field of his witness. The table once associated with extraction is replaced by a table of hospitality. Conversion does not require pretending we never knew compromised or wounded people. It changes what we offer them.
Matthew is also called Levi in Mark and Luke. The Church has traditionally understood these accounts to concern the same apostle. Having received a new life, he becomes one of the Twelve and is sent to proclaim the Kingdom, heal the suffering, and give freely what he has freely received.
Evangelist and Missionary
The Church receives the Gospel according to Matthew as part of his apostolic witness. Its opening genealogy places Jesus within the history of Israel and the line of David. Its pages repeatedly show Christ fulfilling the Scriptures, teaching with divine authority, forming the Church, and commanding the apostles to make disciples of all nations through Baptism and teaching.
Ancient Christian testimony connects Matthew with a written Gospel for an early Jewish-Christian audience. Questions about the final Greek form and the precise history of composition remain matters of scholarly discussion. A church biography need not exaggerate certainty to affirm the Gospel’s canonical and apostolic authority.
Traditions concerning Matthew’s later missions vary considerably, naming regions in Africa or Asia and describing his martyrdom in different ways. What remains constant is the Church’s memory of an apostle who carried the Gospel beyond his homeland and sealed his witness in faithfulness to Christ.
Why the Church Remembers Him
Matthew’s life is a testimony to vocation after moral compromise. Christ did not call him because exploitation was insignificant. He called him out of it. Mercy was not permission to remain at the tax booth; mercy made departure possible.
His Gospel also keeps mercy and judgment together. Christ welcomes sinners, commands forgiveness, identifies Himself with the hungry and imprisoned, and warns that every person must answer for the life he has lived.
What His Life Asks of Us
There are tables at which we sit long after we know they are deforming us—habits, bargains, resentments, identities, or sources of security we cannot bring into the Kingdom. Matthew does not offer a complicated first step. When Christ says, “Follow Me,” he gets up.
Repentance begins with grace, but grace moves the feet.
Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew, pray that we may hear the call of Christ, rise from every sinful attachment, and welcome others to the table of His mercy.
A note. These lives are written to introduce, not to direct. Ascetic feats described here belong to particular people under obedience, not to a method anyone should take up alone. Anything touching your own rule of prayer or fasting belongs with your priest or spiritual father.
- Matthew 9:9–13, 10:1–15, and 28:16–20; Mark 2:13–17; Luke 5:27–32
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Book 3; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History
- The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew — Orthodox Church in America
The same Gospel, a week at a time
The saints spent their lives inside these passages. Words for the Narrow Way takes one saying of Christ and gives it seven days — the passage in full, what the Greek is doing, how the Fathers read it, and one practice to carry through the week.