He worked the customs post at Capernaum, handling money on behalf of foreign authorities. ¹ Publicans were despised for it and not unreasonably; the job ran on taking more than was owed. Mark and Luke call him Levi, son of Alphaeus. ²

Jesus said follow me, and, in the Gospel's flat phrasing, he rose and followed him. ¹ There is no negotiation in the account and no interval. He does not go back for anything.

What Matthew did next was throw a meal and fill it with the people he had been working alongside. The objection was immediate, and the answer to it has been quoted ever since: those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. ¹

Benedict XVI draws the conclusion out for anyone inclined to think themselves too far gone. Someone at the far edge of holiness, he says, can become the model of how God's mercy is received. ¹ Matthew is not the exception that proves the rule. He is the rule.

Tradition gives him the first Gospel, written first for Hebrew readers in their own language before he left Jerusalem. ¹² What survives in Greek still carries, in Benedict XVI's phrase, the persuasive voice of the publican Matthew, who having become an Apostle goes on proclaiming God's saving mercy. ¹

The Catholic Encyclopedia is candid that nothing else about him is known. Where he preached afterward, how long, and how he died are not recorded. ²

Accountants, bankers, bookkeepers, and tax collectors, and also actors and taxi drivers. ³ The first four are simply his old job, handed back to him.

September 21, kept in the United States as the Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist. ³⁴

He was disliked for good reasons, not unfair ones. ¹ That is worth sitting with if your own reputation is deserved. The call did not wait for him to become respectable first.

He got up and left the money on the table. ¹ Nobody in the story asks whether he was ready.

The first thing he did as a disciple was feed his old friends and let Jesus meet them. ¹ Not a clean break from everyone he knew. An introduction.

His job came back to him as a patronage: accountants, bookkeepers, bankers, tax collectors. ³ Whatever you do all day is closer to the material of a vocation than it usually feels.