St Matthew, Evangelist and Apostle

Reading: St. Matthew 9.9-13

As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.

Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Meditation: Tradition tells us that Matthew’s martyrdom was a painful one.  So St. Matthew, having once been a tax-collector, has been converted to one who, rather than taking, gives.  Once a thief by trade (as tax-collectors customarily were), he became Apostle and Evangelist, dispensing freely the mercy of God to the undeserving.  Indeed as Matthew once exacted custom for Rome from the Jews, now we have in St. Matthew’s Gospel the Gospel written for the Jews, that they might receive their long-promised Messiah.  For as Jesus ate with the sinner Matthew and so taught him mercy, so did St. Matthew through His Gospel hand down the tradition of the eternal Feast of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament.  We who feast at the Sacrament are likewise, though sinners, blessed with the very blessing Matthew himself once received, of mercy, life, and salvation.  For Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance..

From Every Day Will I Bless Thee: Meditations for the Daily Office

An audio of a sermon from Pastor Eckardt of St. Paul’s in Kewanee from last night is here.