SEPTEMBER 21 – ST. MATTHEW, APOSTLE.

ONE day, as our Lord was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw, sitting at the receipt of custom, Matthew the publican, whose business it was to collect the taxes from the people for their Roman masters. Jesus said to him, “Follow Me;” and leaving all, Matthew arose and followed Him. Now the publicans were abhorred by the Jews as enemies of their country, outcasts, and notorious sinners, who enriched themselves by extortion and fraud. No Pharisee would sit with one at table. Our Saviour alone had compassion for them. So St. Matthew made a great feast, to which he invited Jesus and His disciples, with a number of these publicans, who henceforth began eagerly to listen to Him. It was then, in answer to the murmurs of the Pharisees, that He said, “They that are in health need not the physician. I have not come to call the just, but sinners to penance.” After the Ascension, St. Matthew remained some years in Judæa, and there wrote his Gospel, to teach his countrymen that Jesus was their true Lord and King, foretold by the Prophets. St. Matthew afterward preached the faith far and wide, and is said to have finished his course in Parthia.

REFLECTION: Obey all inspirations of our Lord as promptly as St. Matthew, who, at a single word, “laid down,” says St. Bridget, “the heavy burden of the world to put on the light and sweet yoke of Christ.”

WORD OF THE DAY

EBIONITES. Two early Christian sects that professed Judaistic and Gnostic errors. The Judaistic Ebionites insisted on the continued observance of the Mosaic Law, denied Christ’s divinity and virginal conception, considered St. Paul an apostate, and used only Matthew’s Gospel. The Gnostic Ebionites held that matter is eternal and emanates from God; that it constitutes his body; that creation is therefore only a transformation of pre-existing material; that the universe is composed of two elements, the good and the evil; that the Son of God rules over the good part of the world and the devil over the evil.

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

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