{"id":6246,"date":"2006-08-30T08:27:29","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T08:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/cari-fratelli-e-sorelle.html"},"modified":"2006-08-30T08:27:29","modified_gmt":"2006-08-30T08:27:29","slug":"cari-fratelli-e-sorelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/cari-fratelli-e-sorelle.html","title":{"rendered":"Cari fratelli e sorelle"},"content":{"rendered":"

From today’s General Audience, via AsiaNews:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
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After presenting historical data about Matthew-Levi, a collector at Capernaum, the pope expressed his reflections. Above all, there is the fact that \u201cJesus welcomed into a group of his intimate friends a man who, according to the ideas in vogue in Israel at the time, was held to be a public sinner. Matthew, in fact, not only handled money held to be impure because of its provenance from people foreign to the people of God, but he also collaborated with a foreign authority that was hatefully greedy, whose taxes could be determined in an arbitrary way.\u201d The conclusion the pope was driving at was immediately clear: \u201cJesus excludes no one from his friendship. In fact, just as he was sitting at table in the house of Matthew-Levi, in response to those who professed to be scandalized by the fact that he was in disreputable company, Jesus made this important statement: \u2018Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners\u2019 (Mk 2:17).\u201d And again: \u201cIn the figure of Matthew, then, the Gospels offer us a real paradox: those who are apparently farthest away from holiness can actually become a model of welcome of God\u2019s mercy so that its marvellous effects can be seen in his existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The call of Matthew, like that of the other apostles, highlights the fact that the call to follow Jesus can happen to anybody, even to \u201cpeople of low social status, while they attend to their mundane work\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"Calling\"<\/a> However, the conclusion is not of a \u201cplacatory\u201d Christianity: the call of Jesus marks the beginning of transformation and conversion. The painting of Caravaggio of the call of Matthew (in the church of St Luigi dei Francesi<\/em>), that the pope mentions, is very eloquent in this regard. <\/p>\n

Benedict XVI continued: \u201cTo the call of Jesus, Matthew responds with an instant \u2018he got up and followed him\u2019. The tightness of the sentence clearly shows the readiness with which Matthew responds to the call. For him, this means leaving everything, especially that which used to guarantee him a secure source of income, even if often unjust and dishonourable. Evidently Matthew understood that closeness with Jesus did not allow him to persevere in activities disapproved by God. The application to the present is easily intuited: even today, attachment to things that are incompatible with following Jesus \u2013 like dishonestly acquired wealth \u2013 is not admissible. Once He said, without half measures: \u2018If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me\u2019 (Mt 19:21). And this is just what Matthew did: he got up and followed up. In this \u2018getting up\u2019, it is fair to read the detachment from a situation of sin and also the conscious adherence to a new existence. Not for nothing is the Greek verb used by the evangelist, anast\u00e1s<\/em>, the same used elsewhere in the New Testament to express the resurrection of Jesus!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is really nothing like seeing Carravagio’s Matthew<\/em> series there in person in San Luigi dei Francesi<\/a>. One of the marvels of Rome, of course, is to be able to walk into churches and study and meditate on Carravagios, Raphaels, and Michelangelos. It is a large canvas, in a side chapel, with the other two works, The Inspiration <\/em>and The Martyrdom<\/em> on adjoining and facing walls. <\/p>\n

Get up…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From today’s General Audience, via AsiaNews: After presenting historical data about Matthew-Levi, a collector at Capernaum, the pope expressed his reflections. Above all, there is the fact that \u201cJesus welcomed into a group of his intimate friends a man who, according to the ideas in vogue in Israel at the time, was held to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCari fratelli e sorelle - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/cari-fratelli-e-sorelle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cari fratelli e sorelle - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From today’s General Audience, via AsiaNews: After presenting historical data about Matthew-Levi, a collector at Capernaum, the pope expressed his reflections. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}