Commentary from
THE ANNOTATED
BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYER
Edited by JOHN HENRY BLUNT
Rivingtons, London, 1884
SAINT MATTHEW.
[September
21.]
The festival of this Apostle has
Gospel and Epistle appointed for it in the Comes of St. Jerome, but it does
not seem to have been celebrated in September; and in the Oriental Church it
is still observed on November 16th. In his double capacity of Apostle
and Evangelist, the first who was inspired to write the Holy Gospel, and who
tells us more than all of our Lord's human life, his name has ever been much
honoured in the Church. Of the four "living creatures" by whom the
Apocalypse is believed to symbolize the Evangelists or their Gospels, the
"likeness of a man" is the one assigned to St. Matthew, as significant of
the prominence which his Gospel gives to our Lord's human nature.
This holy Apostle and Evangelist
is first mentioned in his own Gospel and by the other Evangelists as a Roman
toll-gatherer, though he himself was a Jew. His office was to collect
tolls and customs from those who passed over the sea of Galilee, and it
appears to have been near Capernaum that he was engaged in this duty when he
heard the words of Jesus, "Follow Me." [Matt. ix. 9.] As the
sons of Zebedee had left their ships, their nets, and their occupation, to
obey those words, so did St. Matthew give up his profitable employment to do
the bidding of Him Who had "not where to lay His head:" and, as it seems to
have been immediately afterwards that our Lord made him one of His Apostles,
the forsaking of all that he had must have been as final as it was sudden,
shewing how entirely obedient he became to his Lord. After the
dispersion of the Apostles St. Matthew took part in the evangelization of
Chaldaea, and gave up his life to his Master's service by martyrdom at
Nadabar. His Gospel is supposed to have been written by him originally
in Hebrew for the Jewish Christians, but the Hebrew version appears to have
been soon superseded by one in Greek, which was doubtless the work of the
Evangelist himself, for it has always been received into the Canon of Holy
Scripture. A copy of the Hebrew text is said to have been found in the
grave of St. Barnabas A.D. 485, but it is not now extant.
