Apostle Matthew the Evangelist
November 16th
He was a universally despised “publican” – a scorned and hated tax collector for the Roman Empire – and yet he became one of the most eloquent champions of the Holy Gospel in the entire history of Christianity.
The Holy Apostle Matthew was a great sinner, and he knew it.
He understood full well that the tax collectors of First-Century Palestine were condemned everywhere as greedy thieves who would stop at nothing in order to steal every penny they could from the citizens. And Matthew did not deny his guilt. Working the streets of his native Capernaum in the Palestinian region of Galilee, he exploited his defenseless countrymen as hard as he could, and he confiscated their property with relish.
In spite of Matthew’s sinfulness, however, a great miracle took place . . . and that miracle underlined what may be the single most important truth in the entire Gospel: Christ loves sinners!
The Son of Man did not come to earth to save the righteous . . . but to offer salvation to all those who struggle under the load of their sinfulness! And when he began to walk the streets of Palestine with his new friend, Matthew (and even to dine with him at his house, now and then), the “upright citizens” of that day – the self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees, in particular – were outraged. How dare He spend time with a tax collector, whose soul was obviously black with sin!Sadly enough, the Scribes and the Pharisees had completely failed to grasp the central truth of the Holy Gospel: the fact that Jesus came for everyone, and especially for those whose souls are dark with sin.TAKEN FROM
Nowhere is the healing and saving power of this truth more evident than in the life of the Holy Land tax collector who would be reborn in the service of Jesus Christ. (After his conversion, of course, he would pay back all those whom he had robbed, many times over, while also begging their forgiveness for the harm he had done them.) St. Matthew was a great evangelist and also a holy martyr who never lost his faith in God.
Still, his greatest single gift was surely the magnificent document he wrote during the years after the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus: the first book of the New Testament, also known as the Gospel According To St. Matthew.
St. Matthew’s amazing odyssey as one of the early Church’s most effective evangelists began in Capernaum, the moment he heard the Savior utter three fateful words: Come, follow me.
Moved deeply by the spirit and unable to resist this destiny-changing command, the tax collector did as he was instructed. In the space of an instant, he dropped what he was doing and fell into step with the Savior of mankind. Why did it happen? The answer is a mystery that lies beyond human understanding. Certainly, there was nothing in Matthew’s background to suggest that such a transformation might take place some day.
Also known as “Levi” (the name Matthew means “Gift of God”), he was the son of an ordinary workingman named Alphaeus, and there was nothing at all unusual about his early life on the streets of Capernaum. And yet we know that once the command was given – Come, follow me! – this undistinguished publican became another kind of man altogether. During the years that followed his conversion, he would preach the Holy Gospel for eight years in Palestine, and then in several foreign lands.
Before he was finished, the zealous St. Matthew would bring the Good News of his new faith to the Parthians and the Medes, among others, – and then finally to the fierce Ethiopians of Africa, where his burning loyalty to Jesus Christ and his courageous insistence on evangelizing for the Son of Man would ultimately cost him his life.
His struggles in Ethiopia, especially, would be remembered by generations of Christians as emblematic of the holy martyr’s total and unswerving commitment to the mission of Jesus Christ. After converting many to the faith in that wild and uncultivated land, St. Matthew would appoint a loyal follower – the steadfast Plato – as bishop of the Ethiopian city of Mirmena, and would then retire to the solitude of a nearby mountain.
For a little while, he lived in peaceful prayer and meditation. But when he baptized the wife and son of the Prince of Ethiopia, St. Matthew’s fate was sealed. Sorely offended by their new faith, the enraged prince Fulvian sent a dozen armed guards to arrest this spiritual upstart and fling him into a prison cell.
And then a very strange thing happened. As the guards approached the former tax collector in order to arrest him . . . their vision grew fuzzy and clouded. Vertigo set in! They knew their quarry was nearby, because they could hear him talking, only a few feet away. But their eyes were useless; the man remained invisible!
Frustrated and more than a little alarmed, the would-be jailers hurried back to the prince’s palace and ruefully explained the situation: The holy man who had dared to baptize the tyrant’s family wore an impenetrable cloak of invisibility. Predictably, the prince grew even angrier . . . and quickly dispatched a second group of deputies to the scene.
As it turned out, the second group of officers fared even worse than the first. When they approached the apostle, they were alarmed to see that he glowed with a brilliant, unearthly light! In fear for their lives, they threw down their weapons and ran back to Fulvian’s palace, where they babbled helplessly and refused to return to the chase.
The prince had seen enough. Having reached the end of his patience, the exasperated ruler decided to make the arrest himself. But as soon as Fulvian came near the holy apostle, an immense burst of radiance blinded him and left him standing helpless, quivering with fear. But St. Matthew felt only compassion for the trembling potentate – and quickly said a prayer asking Almighty God to restore the man’s sight.
When the struggling tyrant realized that he could see again, he quickly repaid St. Matthew for his kindness – by having him bound and then surrounded by a great stack of firewood covered with tar and pitch. St. Matthew showed little fear, however, and for good reason: Although the merciless dictator set the great brush pile alight – not once but twice – the roaring flames did not even singe the body of the holy evangelist. Nonetheless, the great holy man now understood that his time had come, and his soul rose up to receive its glorious reward.
The prince was amazed by these events, of course, but his heart was dark, dark. And because he was not yet convinced of the truth of St. Matthew’s message – that Christ loves sinners and has come to save them from Hell – the brutal Fulvian ordered that his body be placed inside a lead coffin and then tossed into the sea.
No sooner had this vile act been accomplished, however, than the Holy Martyr appeared to his loyal Bishop Plato in a dream and gave him careful instructions on where to look for the coffin of lead. The good bishop soon located the saint’s remains . . . and when the prince saw that this miracle had also occurred, he was finally convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ. After being converted, Fulvian was baptized by none other than the same Bishop Plato – who in a stroke of pure genius decided to award him the Christian name of “Matthew!”
From that day forward, the penitent prince reformed his life. He became a pious presbyter and lived as an exemplary Christian – to the point that when the faithful Plato finally died, the Gospeler appeared to the former prince in a dream and explained that the next Bishop of Ethiopia would be its once-upon-a-time merciless tyrant, Fulvian.
The miracle of the prince’s conversion wasn’t the only such incident that occurred in the land of Ethiopia, however. On yet another celebrated occasion, after the Lord appeared to St. Matthew in the person of a bright youth and presented him with a staff, the evangelist planted it at the doors of his church. To the amazement of all, the staff quickly grew into a tree that bore delicious fruit . . . while its roots discharged a steady stream of water. When the ferocious Ethiopians (many were cannibals, according to historians of the period) ate the fruit and drank the healing water, they were soon made peaceable and full of the spirit of the Lord.
St. Matthew wrote his Gospel –the first Book of the New Testament – in the Hebrew dialect known as “Aramaic,” and it was later translated into Greek and then disseminated to the world at large. This priceless document was written in Matthew’s native Palestine, in the region of Galilee, and probably around 40 A.D., according to most scholars of the period.
The life of the Holy Apostle Matthew the Evangelist has served over the centuries as a vivid and compelling example of Christ’s love for all sinners. In the world of First-Century Galilee, no citizen was despised more than the “publican” – the tax collector for the hated Romans, who ruled ancient Palestine. Yet Jesus Christ chose this same tax collector to be not only one of his Twelve Apostles, but also the author of one of the most valuable documents in the history of Christianity.
Matthew's life could not have been an easy one, but he was open to God's grace of conversion and he ultimately gave up everything he possessed – including his life – for Jesus.
The story we have of Matthew's conversion and the feast he arranged shows us some of the great compassion that Jesus feels for all of us. He reached out to the social outcasts, and He even made one of them an apostle who is historically attested as the author of the Gospel that bears his name.
We should be willing to follow in the steps of our Lord Jesus, by seeking out the sick, the sinners, and all other undesirables – so that we can call them into the fellowship of the Body of Christ!
Apolytikion in the Third Tone
O holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew, intercede with the merciful God that He grant unto our souls forgiveness of offences.
Kontakion in the Fourth Tone
When thou didst cast away the publican’s balance and wast united to the yoke of uprightness, then didst thou prove a merchant of great excellence, one that gathered in the wealth of the wisdom of Heaven; for this cause, the word of truth thou didst herald, O Matthew, and didst arouse the souls of sluggish men by signifying the dread day of reckoning.
