SEPTEMBER 21, 2024 – ST. MATTHEW, APOSTLE.

• St. Matthew the Evangelist (65). Apostle, Martyr, Patron or Patroness. Patron of bankers and accountants. (Current, Traditional)

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

MOTIVATIONAL HIERARCHY. The theory that all human beings have an implicit hierarchy of motives in all their conscious actions. The hierarchy, it is said, ranges in ascending order as follows: physiological needs, personal security, social relations, prestige, power possession, self-actualization, and the need for knowledge, aesthetic and religious needs. Somewhat different sequences are proposed by various writers, but they agree that, unless people are morally perverse, they recognize the priority of the spiritual over the bodily and of the religious over what concerns only space and time.

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!)

This article, SEPTEMBER 21, 2024 – ST. MATTHEW, APOSTLE. is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
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