Anns_St.Matthew

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St. Matthew

St. Matthew
Patron of Bankers Feastday:
September 21st

St. Matthew, one of the twelve Apostles, is the author of the first Gospel.
This has been the constant tradition of the Church and is confirmed by the
Gospel itself. He was the son of Alpheus and was called to be an Apostle while
sitting in the tax collectors place at Capernaum. Before his conversion he was
a publican, i.e., a tax collector by profession. He is to be
identified with the "Levi" of Mark and Luke.

His apostolic activity was at first restricted to the communities of
Palestine. Nothing definite is known about his later life. There is a tradition
that points to Ethiopia as his field of labor; other traditions mention of
Parthia and Persia. It is uncertain whether he died a natural death or
received the crown of martyrdom.

St. Matthew's Gospel was written to fill a sorely-felt want for his fellow countrymen,
both believers and unbelievers. For the former, it served as a token of his regard
and as an encouragement in the trial to come, especially the danger of falling
back to Judaism. For the latter, it was designed to convince them that the Messiah
had come in the person of Jesus, our Lord, in Whom all the promises of the
Messianic Kingdom embracing all people had been fulfilled in a spiritual, rather
than in a carnal way: "My Kingdom is not of this world." His Gospel then answered
the question put by the disciples of St. John the Baptist, "Are You He Who is to
come, or shall we look for another?"

Writing for his countrymen of Palestine, St. Matthew composed his Gospel in his
native Aramaic, the "Hebrew tongue" mentioned in the Gospel and the Acts of the
Apostles. Soon afterward, about the time of the persecution of Herod Agrippa I
in 42 AD, he took his departure for other lands.

Another tradition places the composition of his Gospel either between the time
of this departure and the Council of Jerusalem, i.e., between 42 AD and 50 AD or
even later. Definitely, the Gospel depicting the Holy City with its altar and temple
as still existing, and without any reference to the fulfillment of our Lord's
prophecy, shows that it was written before the destruction of the city by the
Romans in 70 AD, and this internal evidence confirms the early traditions.