Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

Saint Matthew was one of the Twelve Apostles. Before he followed Jesus, he was a tax collector. The tradition of the Church attributes to him the first of the Gospels, which opens the New Testament. The Church celebrates his feast on September 21.

The first Gospel calls him “Matthew the tax collector,” while Mark and Luke, describing the same call, name him Levi; Mark adds that he was the son of Alphaeus. In Hebrew the name Matthew means “gift of God.” Benedict XVI inferred from the Gospels that he collected customs duties at Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee. Tax collectors were regarded as public sinners, because they served a foreign power and handled money considered unclean. It is not known when or where he was born.

Passing by the customs post, Jesus saw him and said, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. Afterward Jesus sat at table in his house with many tax collectors and sinners. To the Pharisees, who were scandalized, he replied that it is the sick who need a physician, not the healthy, and added: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” Benedict XVI saw in him a sign that someone who seems far from holiness can become a model of accepting God’s mercy.

Matthew appears in all the lists of the Twelve and was among the apostles praying in the Upper Room after the Ascension. Around the year 130, Bishop Papias of Hierapolis wrote that Matthew set down the words of the Lord in Hebrew. Eusebius of Caesarea added that the apostle preached first among the Jews and, before going to other peoples, left them the Gospel in their own language. That text has not survived; we know the Gospel of Matthew in Greek. The Roman Martyrology stresses that it proclaims Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, as the one who fulfilled the Old Testament.

There is no certain information about the apostle’s later life. Ancient writers name various lands of his mission, most often Ethiopia. It is not even known whether he died a martyr: older editions of the Roman Martyrology spoke of martyrdom in Ethiopia, other accounts of a natural death, and the present Martyrology is silent. Nor do we know the year of his death. His relics are venerated in the crypt of the cathedral of Salerno, where according to local tradition they arrived in the tenth century.

His commemoration on September 21 already appears in the Hieronymian Martyrology of the fifth or sixth century. The Collect of the Mass says that God in his untold mercy made a tax collector an apostle. On this day the Liturgy of the Hours reads a homily of Saint Bede, according to which Jesus looked at the tax collector “miserando atque eligendo,” with mercy and choosing him. Pope Francis took these words as his motto; on the feast of Saint Matthew in 1953, after confession, he discovered his call to religious life. Saint Matthew has been venerated since apostolic times, before canonization processes existed.