The saints

Saint Matthew

Apostle and Evangelist · Feast day September 21 · First century · Galilee · Also known as Levi

Saint Matthew was a tax collector, despised by his own people, until Jesus passed by his booth and said two words, Follow me, and he rose and left everything. He became an apostle and, by tradition, the writer of the first Gospel.

And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.Matthew 9:9 (KJV)

The tax collector

Matthew, also called Levi, sat at the receipt of custom in Capernaum, collecting taxes for Rome, a trade that made him rich and hated, ranked with sinners by his neighbors. Then Jesus, passing by, simply said, Follow me. And he arose and followed him, leaving the money behind, and threw a great feast for Jesus with his fellow tax collectors, drawing the scorn of the Pharisees and the famous answer of Jesus: They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

The first Gospel

By the tradition of the early church, Matthew wrote the first of the four Gospels, addressed above all to his fellow Jews, showing at every turn how Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is the Gospel that gives us the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and the Great Commission, and it has taught the church to pray and to live ever since.

Apostle and martyr

After Pentecost Matthew preached among his own people and, by tradition, carried the gospel abroad, to Ethiopia or Persia by various accounts, where he is honored as a martyr. As a man who had kept careful accounts before Christ called him, he is the patron of accountants and bankers.

Why Matthew still matters

Matthew is the proof that no reputation is too low for Christ to call. He heard two words at his tax booth and became an apostle and an evangelist whose Gospel opens the New Testament. Grace does not wait for us to become respectable; it calls us as we are and makes us new.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Patron saint of accountants · Saint Luke · Saints for September 21 · Saint of the day