THE STORY OF MATTHEW

Matthew the tax-collector and Levi are the 

same person [in this instance]. The name Matthew, which he received after the call from Jesus, means “Gift of God”. It is a contraction of the Hebrew Mattityahu. At Matth. 10, 3, Tatian adds “also the Lebbaeus”. We do not know when or why the Lord gave him the name by which he is now best known in the Church. Out of respect for their fellow apostle, neither Luke nor Mark mentions Matthew’s profession, because tax-collectors were hated. Matthew himself, however, reports that the Lord “saw a man called Matthew, sitting at the tax-booth”, that is a man already known as Matthew. As Saint John Chrysostom notes: “The apostle is deserving of admiration for not concealing his former life, and also giving his name, which the others concealed with another appellation”. The apostle does not deny his former life, but acknowledges his alteration after being called. This demonstrates his humility




CAPERNAUM




.Matthew lived in Capernaum, a city that belonged to the jurisdiction of Herod. As a clerk, he would have been in the service of some larger employer who had paid the tax revenues of the city, or even the region, to the Romans and then had the right to keep whatever monies he had raised. Matthew would certainly have known the Aramaic spoken by the Jews in the area, and Greek as well.

When the Lord said: “Follow me”, he left immediately, abandoning everything without hesitation This indicates that he already knew and respected the Lord. He, too, belonged to the tax-collectors who approached the Lord and concerning whom the Pharisees condemned Him for being “a friend of tax-collectors” (Luke 7, 35; 15, 1). Matthew must have been a rich man. This is apparent from the fact that he had his own house. It was there that, to celebrate his call and the abandonment of his profession, he gave a farewell meal, to which he invited a good many people. It is not clear from the Gospels whether he, too, was a disciple of Saint John the Baptist, as other disciples of Christ seem to have been.

after the Lord’s resurrection, Matthew preached Christ for about eight years to the Jews. It was here that, between 60-66 A.D., he wrote the Gospel, originally in Aramaic, and then either translated it himself or had it translated into Greek [There is also a school of thought that the Gospel was written first in Greek. While it is certainly true that some of the expressions are Hellenized versions of Aramaic equivalents, it is not possible to know whether this is because of the translator or because they had passed into the ordinary Greek of the region and were therefore included in an original text. Rather like using, say, “a blank slate” [tabula rasa] in English. WJL]. It contains narratives of the events in the life of the Lord and also teachings which He used in His catechesis. Irinaios is the first to mention that “the Gospel according to Saint Matthew was written to the Jews”, meaning that the recipients were Jews who had become Christians or, as Origen says: “those who believed from Judaism”.