Answering Christ's call: St Matthew, and vocations
Fr Henry James Coleridge explains how St Matthew's calling contains much that we need to know about our calling as Christians, and how we should respond to a vocation to the priesthood or religion.
Editor’s Notes
It is fitting that the feast of St Matthew always falls so close to the Autumn Ember Days, given the link between these days of fasting and ordination to the priesthood. Both this piece, and the below on the Ember Days, address the topic of vocation and answering Christ’s call.
Many of us have known men and women who spend years in the public discernment culture. That culture is not conducive to anything at all. In any case, the vocation is primarily discerned in the seminary or in the monastery, not out of it.
Such young men are encouraged to get a hold of the book Religious Vocation: An Unnecessary Mystery by Fr Richard Butler, and – if the conditions are possible for you – take some actual steps to go to seminary. The same applies to the religious life.
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The Call of St Matthew
From
The Training of the Apostles, Part I
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. V, pp 79-92
Call of St. Matthew following on the miracle on the paralytic
The three historical Evangelists connect the miracle of which we have just been speaking with the call of St. Matthew to that close following of our Lord which already distinguished this chosen disciple, and out of which, soon after this time, the Apostolate itself issued.
It is impossible to say whether St. Matthew had been present at the miracle of the healing of the paralytic man. That our Lord, passing from the scene of this miracle, found him already seated in his office by the shores of the lake, does not prove with absolute certainty that he had not himself seen the miracle. But it is more likely that he had heard of it, that the eager crowd had spread the news all over the city almost as soon as the miracle had been performed, and that in this way the future Apostle and Evangelist had learnt of the new manifestation of power on the part of our Lord.
It was a manifestation which was by no means limited, either in our Lord's intention or in the minds of the people who witnessed it, to the external cure which had been wrought, wonderful as that might be. The miracle had been wrought with the express design of drawing attention to, and proving by the most tangible evidence, the claim, which our Lord now advanced, to the power of forgiving sins. It may be assumed that this feature in the miracle was the ground of the great astonishment and exultation with which the cure itself was received by the people at large, and that when it was announced to those who had not been present, as may have been the case with St. Matthew, this was the point on which particular stress was laid.
Thus, even if St. Matthew had not been present at the working of the miracle, it is very likely that he may have heard, before our Lord addressed him, not of the miracle alone, but of the great point of doctrine which our Lord had so markedly connected with it. That it was so may be gathered from the manner in which he speaks of the impression produced by the miracle on the multitudes, who glorified God, Who had given such power unto men.
Circumstances of the call
If we put together the accounts which are here given us by the three Evangelists, it appears that, after working the miracle in the house, which was in the middle of the town, our Lord went forth and began again to teach the people.
There seems to be some contrast drawn between the crowds and the more limited audience who had gained admittance into the house, and whom, from the words of St. Luke, we may suppose to have been ecclesiastics, and scribes, and other persons of more or less authority and influence.
Our Lord went, then, to the sea-shore, and there taught the people in the same way as on the occasion lately mentioned, before He worked the miracle of the wonderful draught of fishes. As on that occasion He may have led up in His teaching to the miracle which He was about to perform, and which was full of significance, especially to the future Apostles, St. Peter and the others, so now He may perhaps have made the forgiveness of sins, or at least that image of sin which is represented in the palsy from which the bedridden man had been delivered, the subject of His discourse.
The teaching came to an end in due time, and, instead of launching out to sea as on the former day, our Lord passed homewards towards the house in which He usually dwelt. On His way, by the side of the lake, perhaps on some small pier or quay at which the vessels which plied on the lake discharged their cargoes, or at some spot near the gate at which some of the great roads which met at Capharnaum entered the city, He saw one on whom His thoughts had long rested, and who appears to have been already a disciple, although not yet in that close degree to which some were admitted.
“He saw a man, Levi the son of Alphaeus, or Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom.”
He was a farmer of the public revenue, and was engaged in his ordinary office, taking toll on the merchandise or supplies which entered the city. ‘Our Lord said to him, Follow Me, and he arose, left all, and followed Him.’
St. Jerome on St. Matthew
St. Jerome tells us, in the passage which is selected as a lesson in the Roman Breviary for the feast of this Blessed Evangelist,1 that certain infidel writers had fastened on this incident as furnishing ground for a charge either against the Evangelical narrator or against the persons concerned in the incident.
Either St. Matthew must have had some more convincing reason for following our Lord than this simple call, and then the narrative is defective, or he must have acted foolishly, and then the incident discredits the whole cause of the Gospel kingdom.
The holy Father remarks that St. Matthew, like the other Apostles, must have had abundant evidence, before the simple call of our Lord, to reveal to him Who He was Who thus called him. The call came at the end of a period of many months, during which the character, preaching, and miracles of our Lord must have been before the mind of a dweller in Capharnaum like St. Matthew.
We have no account at all of his parentage or education, but it is fair to suppose that his selection from among the Apostolic band for the special office of the Evangelist of the Hebrew Christians must have been made with some regard to qualities which he possessed by character or training. Thus it would have been natural for him to have been comparatively well acquainted with Greek, the language of commerce, Capharnaum being, as has been said, on some of the high roads of traffic between Syria and Egypt, passing through Galilee to the sea coast.
It is a natural conjecture that he was trained for the position which he held, in which case he may have received it from his father or some other relation. It is certain that the character of his mind was simple and devotional, and that he was well acquainted with the Scriptures of the Jews, in every page of which he had learnt to see a prediction or anticipation of the great object of hope towards which all the pious minds of the holy nation were turned.
His mind was full of the glories of the kingdom of the future Christ, the Son of David. There is a conciseness and summariness about the narrative in which he afterwards arranged so many of the actions and sayings of our Lord, which shows a certain masterful grasp of matter before his mind, and a habit of arranging it according to ideas and principles, rather than in the simple chronological or local connection.
That he was large-hearted and open-handed, a man whom people were ready to like and love, even though his profession was in itself unpopular, and, to some extent, looked down upon — like all callings which are supported on the laws or regulations imposed by conquerors or an alien Government upon a subject people — may be gathered from the readiness with which he opened his house to a great concourse of friends when he celebrated, as we might say, his vocation, by an ample entertainment to our Lord and His followers.
It may have been the case that he was to some extent despised by the stricter Pharisees and Scribes, but we find that the objection raised on this occasion by the critics of our Lord's conduct referred rather to his company than to St. Matthew himself. He may have been thought of as the good publican, just as his neighbour the Centurion was in high esteem among the Jews, although a Gentile and an officer under the usurping power of the Caesars.
If such were St. Matthew's character and antecedents, it is certain that he must have gathered much about our Lord from the many opportunities which had been afforded him at Capharnaum. Our Lord had now made the city His chief place of residence for nearly a year, and although He had during that time been often absent, and for long intervals, still He must have excited an amount of attention in the minds of all the more religiously disposed inhabitants which must have drawn them to Him with an irresistible force.
How soon after His first appearance at Capharnaum St. Matthew may have become acquainted with our Lord it is impossible to tell. He may have been among the Galileans who had seen His wonderful works at the time of the first of the Paschal feasts after His baptism; at all events, he must have heard of the marvellous cure of the nobleman's son at a distance, which followed so soon after His return to Galilee. He must have been present at the synagogue on that memorable Sabbath Day when our Lord cast the devil out of the possessed man in the course of the public service, and it is hard to suppose that he knew nothing of the subsequent healing of the mother-in-law of St. Peter, or, much less, of the almost numberless cures of all sorts which took place on the evening of that same day, before our Lord started on His first great missionary expedition.
All these things would sink down into the heart of a man like St. Matthew, and during the long weeks which followed, when our Lord was absent from the city, news would come from time to time of the progress of the marvellous Preacher and worker of miracles through the various towns of Galilee.
Effect of the Sermon on the Mount
The gainful calling of the future Evangelist was one which occupied him during the greater part of the day — perhaps he was like one of the busy servants of commerce in our own cities, who leave their homes in the morning to toil all the day in the accumulation of wealth, but who throw off the thoughts and interests of the day's labour as soon as it ceases to occupy them directly.
Even in the intervals of his business the thought of the new teacher would grow more and more constantly in his mind. He probably became a believer in our Lord long before the moment of which we are now speaking. It is probably not safe, in a case like St. Matthew's, to assume that he was present at all the incidents and discourses which he describes.
But it is very probable at least that he, who has left us the great authentic report of the Sermon on the Mount, was one of the disciples who listened to that teaching.
Meanwhile, he had come to know that many of the disciples of our Lord were following Him about from place to place, that to many the attendance on His teaching had become the main business of life, and that some were even almost inseparable companions of His labours and journeyings.
There had been many things in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the other teaching of our Lord, which had seemed to point to a life quite different from that in which even good Jews had been hitherto content to serve God — a life even above that of the virtuous holy home, the faithful discharge of domestic duties, the careful attention to justice and purity of conscience in the practice of a lawful calling in the world.
Then, again, his own calling was full of danger. He had many opportunities of kindness and consideration for others, he could do many a good deed almost unknown therein, and he could use the wealth which it brought him for purposes of religion and piety.
Still it was a dangerous calling, and if it had not been dangerous in itself it might still have come to seem very uncongenial to one who had heard our Lord preach, who had listened to the lofty teaching of the Beatitudes, who had heard the doctrine about laying up treasure in Heaven, about relying entirely on the providence of the Father, and whose heart had bounded within him as his ears caught the words about some who were to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth, some who were to have committed to them the precious pearls of Divine truth, which were not to be cast to the swine, some who were to keep even the least of the Commandments as well as the greatest, and then by teaching them to others to become great in the Kingdom of Heaven; some who were to be persecuted for the sake of the name of our Lord, and whom He bade to rejoice and be exceeding glad thereat, because they were to have the same treatment at the hands of the world as the prophets of old had received.
Interior struggle
It would not be easy to measure the force of these and other words of our Lord on a simple deep heart like that of this good publican, or to tell how the doctrine about the poverty of spirit and the hunger and thirst after justice, and the mourning for sin, his own or of others, which were to have so high rewards in the new kingdom, must have smitten him at times, as it were, to the ground, and made him yearn for an opportunity of putting in practice in his own case the counsels which made everything else seem worthless and vain in his sight?
In such cases, there is often a hard struggle. Even when the heart is not closely entangled in the meshes of some earthly love or interest, there is a time of darkness and doubt and mental distress, in which the soul seems for a moment to lose the clue to guide her onwards, the light which shines to show her where to set her feet.
At such times, temptations arise in unusual force, and external circumstances seem to combine with internal difficulties to make the onward path impossible. They are times of trouble without and storm within, of gloom and dryness, when prayer moves heavily, and the thoughts and affections are beaten back when they would fain soar to Heaven.
The natural reason is that the soul is drawing near to the decision of a great issue, which has much in it that is repugnant to flesh and blood, and the instincts of the human spirit are arrayed against the change which threatens them with crucifixion. There is also often a preternatural cause at work, for God, Whose strength is made perfect in weakness, allows His poor creature to be tried and exposed to the malice and assaults of its enemies, that it may learn to rest entirely on Him, and to take courage for future conflicts from the experience of past victory.
The evil powers are on the watch against the danger of losing forever their prey or at least of seeing the soul, which they have been able to play with by ordinary temptations, place itself in the citadel of a higher vocation, against which their assaults must be made at far greater disadvantage. And then, in the midst of the darkness and the struggle, there is a sudden peace, for the Master's voice is heard, 'Follow Me!'
The call of Our Lord — ‘Typical’ character of St. Matthew's call
The circumstances of the call of St. Matthew seem to sum up, as in a type, the methods which God so frequently uses for the calming of storms such as those of which we have been speaking, for the dissipation of doubts, and the sudden breathing into the soul of the courage which it requires for its great decision.
It is sometimes an external incident which breaks down the last resistance of a struggling will, or sets the imprisoned soul free. Some great act of mercy, something that seems to bring God nearer to us than before, or a display of His masterful way in dealing with human affairs and human life, such as the death of a person by our side, or the sight of marvels such as those seen at the great places of pilgrimage, or even a sudden change in temporal matters which removes a score of minor difficulties — these, and other things like them, fall on the soul like the touch of spring on a winterbound plain.
Thus the tidings that our Lord had taken on Himself, not only the power of healing diseases, but that far higher and more incommunicable power of forgiving sins, may have struck with a fresh weight of difficulty upon the heart of some Pharisee or teacher of the law, kept in slavery by the chains of human respect and ambition, for which our Lord soon after this time reproached the whole class to which such a man would belong. But to the humble simple publican, it might seem like a ray of heavenly light, dispelling in a moment the clouds which hang over his soul.
There is an anecdote in the early annals of the Society of Jesus of a learned man who had for years been battling with himself as to his vocation to the Society, and could never overcome his difficulties, but who fell in of a sudden with the letters in which St. Francis Xavier described his work in India and the blessings with which God prospered it, and who at once gave way, crying out, ‘This is something indeed, this is something indeed!’ Such is the effect of tidings which waken up in us the consciousness that God is so much nearer to us than we thought, and that His mighty arm is being put forth in our time as in the days of old.
And this is another reason why the enemies of the Church and of Christian perfection are always so unwilling to admit the truth of modern miracles, whether moral or material, because they feel that such manifestations on the part of God reduce their quibbles to dust. If St. Matthew had not been present at the miracle and at the teaching with which our Lord illustrated it, the mere tidings of what had passed must have sent a shock through his soul and gone far to prepare him for the yet more cogent appeal that was soon to follow.
Vocation a personal command
Our Lord, in the cases of which we are speaking, and of which we may well consider this call of St. Matthew to be a normal type, addresses Himself to the soul, internally and personally, as well as by the external incidents lately mentioned.
In truth, every vocation involves a personal command or invitation, on the part of our Lord, addressed to the individual soul. It is couched, as this invitation to St. Matthew is couched, in the words of authority.
There is here no promise, no suggestion, no counsel, but simply the words, ‘Follow Me.’ It is not that our Lord cannot sometimes add promises as inducements to those whom He may call to this or that work or life for Him, as when He said to the first called among the Apostles, on the shore of this same Lake of Galilee, ‘I will make you fishers of men’; or as when He said to the rich young man who inquired after the conditions of salvation, and was not content with the way of the Commandments, that he should have treasure in Heaven if he gave all that he had to the poor.
These instances show us that the spiritual gains of a lofty vocation are not to be set aside in our deliberations as to a choice, for example, of life, or in any other election that we may have to make. But they are to be considered as reasons for the conclusion which is the direct motive for the choices to which they point — that is, the conviction that it is the will of God that such or such a choice should be made in this particular case.
Foundation of the doctrine of vocation
The truth on which the doctrine of vocation rests is that God is the Father and Lord of every human life, and that He has not only laid down certain laws for the freewill which is to guide our choices, laws which cannot be violated or neglected without positive sin, but that He has also a right to choose for His children this kind of life or that, this line of conduct or that, within the limits of the necessary commandments, and that an intimation of His pleasure in this respect has a direct claim on our obedience.
We are His servants as well as His children: as a Lord, He bids us do this or do that, as a Father, He marks out for us the path in life along which He desires our service to take its course, for which He fits us by nature or by grace or by both, and along which He arranges the occasions and opportunities and graces and conflicts and victories on which He has made our crowns depend.
St. Paul's question — and the answer to it
To discover what is God's will in regard to this is the one important matter for each several soul, as St. Paul, immediately on his conversion, put himself at once at the absolute disposal of God, in the famous words, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’2
The will of God, in the case of St. Paul, was to call him to a very high and singular office in the Church, which involved a career of service altogether without parallel. But the will of God is the law of every single life—of that of the most ordinary Christian as well as of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
The answer which was given to the question of St. Paul, that it should be told him what he must do, implies the truth that this knowledge of the particular design of God over the soul is not always gained in the same way. It is sometimes imparted to us by the obvious import of the external circumstances and position in which we are born.
It is sometimes imparted to us by the simple considerations of reason and prudence, balancing the advantages and disadvantages of this or that calling which may be open to us. It is sometimes pointed out by a strong impulse and interior desire, which may require to be tested by reason and submitted to the judgment of a spiritual guide, but which, as a motive influencing the choice, is so powerful as to sweep all obstacles before it. Sometimes again, our Lord, as in the case of St. Matthew and St. Paul, takes the matter, as it were, into His own Divine hands, and interferes almost personally and visibly in leading us up to the choice which He desires us to make.
But all sound vocations must have as their foundation the conviction that this is the will of God, that He desires the particular soul in question to take the particular step or line in question, even though He may have left it to the simple considerations of spiritual prudence to formulate the conclusion.
In whatever way, then, the will of God may be brought home to us, it amounts to a command, and it is an appeal to our personal duty to Him as well as to the considerations of prudence, the desire saving our souls most securely, the wish to be of use to the Church and our brethren in the most efficacious way, and the like.
Importance of the moment of vocation
In this respect, the moment at which a Divine vocation becomes clear to the soul is the most important in life, because it brings us to the point at which we are to choose God's designs or to reject them. It is not, indeed, to be thought of that God will never repeat a call which He has once given, or, indeed, that He will abandon the soul which has turned away from His call.
In the case of persons who have not closed with His Divine call and have thrown themselves into another path of life — as, for instance, a person who, having been called to religion, has entered on the duties of the married state — God may let them feel all along their course the many difficulties and dangers and troubles to which they have exposed themselves, their own unfitness for the temptations and trials which beset them, and the comparative absence of special graces which they might have expected if they had walked along the path which He pointed out to them.
But He will not abandon them, or deny them the graces which are enough to secure their salvation if they use them faithfully. In the case of persons who hesitate to obey the Divine call, it may sometimes pass on, never to return, as seems to have been the case with the rich young man, of whom mention is made at a later period of our Lord's Ministry, but it is also very true that God often waits long and returns, as it were, over and over again, with infinite patience and condescension, until His refractory and reluctant child is forced by interior pressure and external miseries to throw itself absolutely into His loving arms.
Still, in proportion to the clearness and force with which the call of our Lord falls on our ears, is the danger great of heedlessness or of delay in attending to it. It is an immense favour to the soul when God thus addresses Himself to it, and, as it were, solicits it to make the surrender of its freedom, in order that that freedom might be used to its own infinite profit in the best and most secure way.
Thus, we often see vocations delayed, and the light which is required for them is only vouchsafed after long preparation and fervent prayer, and much suffering, for this reason, it may be, among others, that a very great grace is needed to enable the soul to close heartily and at once with the will of God.
Personal following of our Lord — motives for loyalty
Again, it is observable that the glorious vocations of which we have instances in the New Testament history are put into the form of a command to follow our Lord personally. Here we seem to touch the immense and indescribable advantage of the Gospel dispensation over all other forms of God's dealings with man. It is no longer a law or a counsel, but an example, that is to be followed.
The law and the counsel remain as before — but beside them there is the example of our Blessed Lord, the perfect pattern of obedience, the one Son in Whom the Father is well pleased. This example, by a marvellous arrangement of Providence, is not withdrawn from the sight or the imitation of any one of the adopted children of God. It fits all classes of men, every line of life, every age, every condition.
The highest saints cannot outsoar it; the common flock of men, whose path lies along the ordinary road of the Commandments, are not too low for its light to illuminate their footsteps. It gathers to itself, not only the obedience to a Divine precept, but the love called forth by the infinite condescensions of the Incarnation and humble daily life of our Lord. So it is in all cases, even in those in which there is no question of a distinctly apostolic vocation.
Much more is the value of the change infinite when the call is something higher than the ordinary path of the children of God. The more arduous is the path, the more need is there that every step should be set in the right place and taken in due order and time. The more abundant is the harvest of good works which is to be reaped, the more need is there for the powerful impulse of personal example and personal love to secure that the work be done while yet there is time.
The greater are the dangers, the greater the need for the feeling of loyalty to a Master Who bears Himself the most terrible of the pains and dishonours and disappointments which have to be braved.
If the call, ‘Follow Me,’ stirs the hearts even of the ordinary Christian more than a thousand commands and threats and promises, much more must its effect be irresistible when it is addressed to those whom it invites to the closest companionship with Him Who utters it!
This is the spiritual truth on which St. Ignatius has founded what is called the ‘second week’ of his Exercises, the introductory meditation being the ‘Kingdom of Christ’ — the invitation of the Incarnate Son of God to all His subjects to follow Him, and be His companions in the war which He desires to wage for the glory of His Father.
From Fr Coleridge, The Training of the Apostles, Part I.
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St. Hier. In Matt. C. v. (lib. I).
Acts ix. 16