21 September 2018
Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist
Today is the feast of St. Matthew and of course no recognition of the feast can go by without reference to the famous painting of Caravaggio in the Conterelli Chapel in Rome (1600). When you go to Rome (also say when, never if…) a visit to this chapel in St. Louis of the French is, as the French would say, obligatoire. Standing next to the art history majors who view the work considering its importance in the transition from later mannerism to the Roman baroque, you can view the painting in light of its strong spiritual message. The painting portrays Christ at one end of a table filled with men. Jesus points at the man at the end of the table who is busily counting what would be the equivalent of pennies. His downward gaze and serious expression indicates a man caught up, as they say, in small change. A man in the center of the painting points to Matthew the tax collector and looks at Jesus with an expression that can best be translated as “you have got to be kidding?” Not only did Jesus in the painting call a tax collector, he didn’t even get somebody who set his sights on the big haul. In brief, Jesus called someone to be one of his disciples who was nothing less than a cheap crook. This episode painting may have been both hopeful and biographical for Michelangelo Caravaggio who led a life which can best be described as grey turning to dark at some (if not all) of his moral parameters. Caravaggio may have seen in Jesus’ call to Mathew that he too was called and should try to do something about his life. For us, the painting and the call of Mathew remind us that Jesus keeps on calling us to bring about the kingdom, no matter who we are or what we have done.