People of the Book: St. Matthew
One of my favorite pieces of Renaissance art is Caravaggio’s “Call of St. Matthew” in San Luigi dei Francesi, the French church in downtown Rome. The dramatic interplay of light and shadow, the outstretched arm of Christ reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and Creation pieces in the Sistine Chapel, and the tax collectors gathered around the table of the customs house like card sharks hovering over their hands all combine to make the work a striking and energetic scene.
But the genius of the piece for me lies in Caravaggio’s portrayal of Matthew himself. The man heretofore known as Levi’s look of utter shock and amazement as he points questioningly to his chest in response to Jesus combines a sort of whimsical and trepidatious bemusement (somehow reminding me of Alfred E. Neuman — “What, me worry?”), and a more sinister undertone that echoes the chorus of responses to the Lord’s prediction of betrayal at the Last Supper: “Surely, it is not I, Lord?”
The artist, himself a tortured soul, captures perfectly the disquieting and life-altering reply of the scheming and despised crook, who had made himself rich off the sweat of his countrymen, to this utterly captivating Figure at the door. The bearded sinner somehow embodies both the call and often indecisive response to the transcendent that takes place in every human life. And thus the work endures as a masterpiece of Western civilization.
The first book of the New Testament is attributed to this literate and reformed cheating thief, Matthew, who until his conversion was in cahoots with the Roman occupying forces and so by definition on the margins of Israelite society. After Matthew walks out of the taxation office to follow Jesus, he invites the latter to his home for a sumptuous banquet. Shockingly Jesus agrees to dine with this hated and selfish individual infamous throughout the countryside for gouging his fellow Jews for profit.
The Pharisees and other devout children of Abraham, probably even the small coterie of followers that had begun to gather around this unique Preacher, are scandalized by such a public disavowal of the Mosaic purity laws. But Jesus seizes an opportunity to emphasize the wide dragnet of God’s providential care, where the choicest catches are embraced and caught up along with the flotsam and jetsam of the outcast and despised; “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
There is a reason that Matthew’s Gospel was chosen as the forefront book of the canon in the New Testament, although most scholars believe Mark’s work is older. Matthew’s is by far the most “institutional” of the Gospels, for it is only here that Jesus is recorded as saying “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18). Thus, the early church Fathers often gave a sort of spiritual priority to the Matthean account, with its emphasis on the Petrine ministry and Jesus as the new and perfect Moses.
The papacy is a special and ineluctable part of what it means to be Catholic, a permanent charism of unity that can serve Christianity as both a transnational moral voice and a centripetal point of unity from the many elements dispersed throughout the circumference of the faith, to use a Newtonian analogy. It is Matthew who provides the clearest, but in no way only (cf. Lk 22:32, Mk 8:29, etc.) emphasis on the fact that the pontiff is the legitimate heir to steering the barque of Christ. For this reason, Christians for centuries have hailed the pope with the traditional exclamation “Tu es Petrus” – “You are Peter!” And while historical divisions have fractured this unity over the long course of the church’s triumphant march through time, John Paul II asked in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, for a “patient and fraternal dialogue” with all Christians on how best to exhibit the deepening and ever-clearer expression of this primacy and ministry (96).
Because of his many connections with the fiscal and commercial industries of his day, Matthew is the patron saint of bankers, economists, stock brokers, and financial entities, a field of study and practice which I need not emphasize that Americans have much to reflect upon and pray over. Just as Matthew was able to “leave all behind” and follow the Lord, let us turn our attention in these trying times of cantankerous dispute and erratic fear of the future toward that constant and shining pearl of great price, whose treasure neither moth nor rust can destroy.
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.