“The Calling of Matthew”
COMMENTARY ON
MATTHEW 9:9-13
COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 9:9–13
BY BISHOP ROBERT BARRON
“The Calling of Matthew”
COMMENTARY ON
MATTHEW 9:9–13
COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 9:9-13
BY BISHOP ROBERT BARRON
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” —Matthew 9:9–13
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
—Matthew 9:9–13
I wish to get at this story of Matthew’s conversion—penned by the convert himself—by looking at it through a lens provided by a sixteenth-century artist.
Near the Piazza Navona in Rome, there stands the splendid church of San Luigi dei Francesi, and on the wall of a dark corner chapel of that edifice there hangs an unforgettable canvas by the late Renaissance painter Caravaggio. Caravaggio’s Matthew sits at his tax collector’s table wearing all of the finery of a sixteenth-century Italian dandy: silk stockings, jaunty hat, sword at his side, a feathered cap on his head. (If the artist were alive today, he would most likely depict Matthew wearing an Armani suit, a Rolex watch on his wrist, and Gucci leather shoes on his feet.) Matthew is surrounded by a whole coterie of others who, like him, seem caught up in the superficialities of the high life, and the board at which they sit is piled high with the money that Matthew had extorted from his neighbors and fellow citizens.
Across from the tax collector stands the mysterious figure of Jesus wrapped in shadow. He stretches out his hand and indicates Matthew, who points a finger at his own chest and gazes incredulously at Jesus, as if to say, “You’re calling me?” Just as the world comes into being through a sheer act of grace, so newness of spiritual life flows not from the worthiness of the one who receives it, but from the pure generosity of the one who gives it. And as Paul put it in his First Letter to Timothy, God “desires everyone to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4), even those who, like Matthew, find themselves deeply rooted in a lifestyle inimical to the divine will. If the spiritual life is construed as a game of meriting and deserving, achieving and rewarding, it becomes dysfunctional. It must be thought of as, first and last, a grace joyfully received.
“The call of Jesus addresses the mind, to be sure, but it is meant to move through the mind into the body, and through the body into the whole of one’s life, into the most practical moves and decisions.”
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Now what, for us, is that creative and beckoning hand of Jesus? What does it look like? It might be that nagging sense of dissatisfaction, even when we are surrounded with all of the things we thought would make us happy. It might be the voice of a child saying, as a steeple looms into view through the car window, “Why don’t we go to church?” It might be that strange and delicious tug we feel in the presence of holy things or holy people. It might be that line from the Scripture that, in an instant, rearranges the furniture of our minds. It might be a weeping willow tree so beautiful that it makes us weep. It might be the experience of hitting bottom, a humiliation so profound that our illusions of self-reliance permanently vanish. Although Jesus can call us in many ways, there is a privileged medium of this vocation, and Caravaggio subtly indicates it in his composition. Though his hand and face are arrestingly visible, Jesus is, for the most part, obscured by the body of Peter, who lurches in front of him, interposing himself, as it were, between Christ and the viewer. According to the standard iconography, Peter, the rock and the bearer of the keys, is symbolic of the Church. Therefore, Caravaggio is suggesting that it is primarily through the Church—the liturgy, the Eucharist, the proclamation of the Scriptures, the summons to moral excellence, the lives of the saints—that we experience the call of Jesus to conversion.
To return to the narrative in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the tax collector, “Follow me.” The call of Jesus addresses the mind, to be sure, but it is meant to move through the mind into the body, and through the body into the whole of one’s life, into the most practical moves and decisions. “Follow me” has the sense of “Apprentice to me” or “Walk as I walk; think as I think; choose as I choose; see as I see.” Discipleship entails an entire reworking of the self according to the pattern and manner of Jesus.
Upon hearing the address of the Lord, Matthew, we are told, “got up and followed him.” The Greek word behind “got up” is anastas, the same word used to describe the Resurrection (anastasis) of Jesus from the dead. Following Jesus is indeed a kind of resurrection from the dead, since it involves the transition from a lower form of life to a higher, from a preoccupation with the ephemeral goods of the world to an immersion in the affairs of God. Those who have undergone a profound conversion tend to speak of their former life as a kind of illusion, something not entirely real.
Thus Paul can say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20); Thomas Merton can speak of the “false self” that has given way to the authentic self; and, perhaps most movingly, the father of the prodigal son can say, “This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (Luke 15:24). So is conversion an anastasis, a rising from death.
“Following Jesus is indeed a kind of resurrection from the dead, since it involves the transition from a lower form of life to a higher, from a preoccupation with the ephemeral goods of the world to an immersion in the affairs of God.”
Then the Gospel tells us what happened after Matthew’s conversion: “And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples.” The first thing that Jesus does, once he calls the sinner to conversion, is invite him to a party! At the very heart of the spiritual life is the conviction that God stands in need of nothing. Our existence adds nothing to the perfection of God; rather, our existence, in its totality, is a free gift. Therefore, our moral excellence adds nothing to God, and our moral depravity takes nothing from God. What follows from this metaphysical insight is the saving knowledge that God is incapable of playing games of calculation with us. It is not as though we have to “make up for” years of misbehavior in order to be pleasing to God. It is not the case that we have to mollify the hurt feelings of a long-suffering God before he will draw us into his life. The Creator of the universe, the uncaused cause of all of finitude, is always ready to celebrate with us, because he is neither compromised by our sin nor enhanced by our virtue. He is nothing but love, right through, and therefore the party is permanently on. All we have to do is respond to the invitation. What sense, then, do we make of all the scriptural texts having to do with divine anger? Those biblical metaphors should be interpreted as expressions of God’s passion to set things right. Following Thomas Aquinas, we might say that God is not so much angry for his own sake, but rather for ours. It just annoys him (so to speak) that so many of us are refusing his invitation, constantly extended, to join the fun.
And notice how magnetic the converted Matthew has become! To the party flock all of his fellow tax collectors and other sinners. The call of Jesus has summoned Matthew and through him a whole host of others similarly excluded, by their own self-absorption, from the thrill of the divine life. We can only imagine how rowdy, impolite, and socially questionable this gang of lowlifes is. But there they are, gathered, because of Matthew, around the shepherd of Israel. whenever I read the account of Matthew’s conversion, I’m reminded of the story of Charles Colson, the Watergate conspirator turned Christian evangelist. When he was working for Richard Nixon, Colson said that he would gladly have walked over his grandmother to get the president reelected. By all accounts, Colson was one of the most ruthless, focused, and morally bankrupt people in the Nixon White House—and that was saying a lot! Then, while he was in prison, Colson experienced, to his infinite surprise, a radical conversion to Jesus Christ, and for decades after, conducted a remarkably successful ministry to prisoners. Christ called this one sinner, and through him, a bevy of others have joined the party.
So it goes in the order of grace.
This commentary is taken from The Word on Fire Bible, which includes commentaries from Bishop Robert Barron and leading Catholics from across the centuries.The Word on Fire Bible makes one of the hardest books to read more beautiful and accessible. Designed as a “cathedral in print,” it is meant to open up Sacred Scripture in a new and deeper way to any reader. If you want more content like this article, experience the Bible like never before, wrapped in 2,000 years of insight, art, and tradition with The Word on Fire Bible!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Scott Hahn
Dr. Scott Hahn is the Fr. Michael Scanlan Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he has taught for over thirty years. Author or editor of over forty books, Dr. Hahn is also Founder and President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (www.stpaulcenter.com).
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Learn about the Catholic sensibility of Bishop Barron.
In this issue of Evangelization & Culture, you will see the Catholic faith through the unique lens of Bishop Barron. Explore some of Bishop Barron’s theological writings, as well as the saints, spiritual masters, and mentors who played a key role in his own spiritual and intellectual formation. Dr. Eleonore Stump unpacks the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas. Dr. Matthew Nelson reflects on the pivotal influence of Robert Sokolowski. Dr. Scott Hahn examines the inner logic of Sacred Scripture through Barron’s biblical hermeneutic. Finally, Bishop Barron shares his lecture given at Oxford University on St. John Henry Newman and the New Evangelization.
“I detest ‘dumbed-down Catholicism’ and ‘beige Catholicism.’”
BISHOP ROBERT BARRON