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St. Matthew
00:31:02
Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber discuss the Gospel writer and Apostle, St. Matthew. To learn more about the Gospel of St. Matthew, Dr. Gray and Dr. Barber have an ongoing weekly Bible Study that walks through this beautiful Gospel.
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith. Welcome to form Now, I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and Joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, who is a professor scripture here at the Augustine Institute. And we're going to talk about St. Matthew for his feast day and the Gospel of Matthew. And really, Matthew is such an important gospel writer. All four gospels give us a great window into the heart and life of Jesus Christ. And out of all the Bible and all the Bible is fully inspired by the word of God and the Spirit of God. But the Gospels have pride of place. You know, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church talks about that, that the Gospels have a pride of place. And think about that. When you're at Mass and you hear the Old Testament reading, maybe from Moses, or you hear the psalm reading that we sing and refrain, we're sitting. But when you hear the gospel and when you hear St. Paul in the letters, you're sitting. But when you hear the Gospel, what happens? Everybody in the church rises and stands because the Gospels gives us, in a sense, the heart of Christ. It's the sacred heart of all, of the Word, of God, of all the Bible.
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And.
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And so because it really is giving us the life of Christ and it's the center of our faith, the Gospels are something we should be deeply familiar with as Christians. You know, it's great to read St. Augustine's Confessions or to read St. Teresa of Avila or St. Therese of Lisieux or, you know, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. There's so many great saints that we want to read, but above all those things, we want to read the Bible. But in the Bible, beyond everything else in the Bible, what really matters the most for us to live the life of Christ is to read the life of Christ and to know it well. And Matthew's Gospel is an incredible gospel for that. He gives us such a great window into the life of Christ. And Michael, we'll talk about this, but one of the first things that strikes me when I think about Matthew is that his Gospel really became the catechism for the early Christians. It was the, you know, Matthew's Gospel was really the first catechism for the church and for quite a long time, actually. And of course, we think of the catechism of the Catholic Church that the recent one that St. John Paul II made, one of his big projects of his pontificate, and it's a beautiful catechism and Then the biggest catechism before that was the catechism of the Council of Trent. So that catechism followed the Council of Trent. And. And it was a beautiful catechism in itself. But, you know, the early Christians didn't have a catechism. They had the Gospel of Matthew. And then they. And we know out of all the New Testament writings, Matthew's gospel was copied and circulated the most.
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And not only that, in all of our collections of the Gospels. Right. So in the early church, they would begin to put together these gospels. They come to be called gospels. In the early church, they were really nervous about calling them gospels, plural, because Paul is very clear. There's only one gospel, Right. So it's the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Luke, Gospel according to John. It's one gospel. It's just we're getting four takes on this one true message of Jesus. In all of our collections, when they would begin to put them together, Matthew is always the one that's listed first, just as we find in our New Testament, it's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, or sometimes Mark, John, Mark and Luke. But either way.
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But you're right, Matthew is, in a sense, the ground floor of the New Testament.
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That's right. That's right. And it's really important. Important because, you know, Matthew has his own special emphases. There are special emphases in the gospel attributed in Matthew. And one of the key ones is the theme of fulfillment. Right. And that is actually really important. Matthew especially emphasizes that Jesus comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, as Jesus says in Matthew 5, 17. And throughout the opening chapters we have are known as the fulfillment formulas. Yeah, the fulfillment formulas, where as it was said in Isaiah, as it was said in the various books of the prophets in particular. And that's really important because we don't find that so much in Mark, Luke and John. Really. The theme of fulfillment is especially underscored in the Gospel of Matthew. That becomes critical because Matthew's the first book of the New Testament. And so it teaches us to read the rest of the New Testament according to this theme of fulfillment. And so that's a really special aspect of the way Matthew being the first gospel shapes our whole reading of the rest of the New Testament.
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It's a beautiful picture, as you said, this idea of fulfillment, because he's showing that really the story of Jesus that he's telling in his gospel is the story of Israel reaching its climax, reaching literally its fulfillment.
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Right.
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And so this is not a new story, it's not a new religion. Christianity and Jesus Christ comes to complete and to fulfill God's promises to Israel. And so really this is a fulfillment and a continuation of the story of Israel in the Jewish scriptures, in the.
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Old Testament, no question about it, right from the very beginning of the book of the Gospel of Matthew. And of course, you know, I'm here sitting with you, Tim, talking about Matthew again. We do have ongoing Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew. You can find all the videos collected. Just do a little search on forum for Bible Study. You'll find Gospel of Matthew. Actually, I think there's a tab at the top there. We've talked about this in our Bible study. The very first verse of the Gospel is the book of literally the genesis of Jesus Christ. So right there we have that theme of new creation and we're going to see multiple echoes of the scriptures of Israel begins the book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ, which means Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So you can't read Matthew apart from the Old Testament.
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When I think of Matthew's Gospel in relationship to the other gospels, one of the things that stands out is, you know, Luke is probably the master of, of the Greek language out of all the gospel writers. He's a native Greek speaker, he's a master storyteller. He's phenomenal. John gives us the mysticism of John and this great, you know, divine perspective on Jesus.
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The eagle.
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Yeah, the eagle, he soars. That's the symbol for the Gospel of John because he soars like an eagle to the heavens. And Mark is the action packed drama gospel. And I love Mark. We have lectio mark on form, you can dive into that. But Matthew, we know he was a tax collector, which means he's an accountant is the way to think about it, right? And if you know accountants, I know a few quite well, they're very organized, orderly people. There's a box, there's a right place for everything and they're super organized. They think of one of our nephews and from age 5 he had his sock drawer color coordinated and everything just perfect, right? And so Matthew's that kind of, you know, I bet when he was a boy his sock drawer was, you know, well organized. He's an accountant, so he's got his place for everything. But you know what's beautiful is God chooses Matthew to be an apostle, to be his disciple. And Jesus knows I need Matthew to write a gospel and Matthew's going to write a gospel that's the most structured out of all the four Gospels. It's very organized. He'll take certain blocks and. And he'll organize things. You'll have like chapters eight and nine of the Gospel of Matthew. Ten mighty deeds.
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Right.
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So he puts these miracles in this box. Then you have chapters five through seven. It's the Sermon on the Mount. He's got a box for that, for the teaching of Jesus there. And then he's got instructions to the 12, and he's got that in a box in chapter 10 and then in chapter 18. So he has these boxes, so to speak, where he puts the structure. And so it's really organized. And I think God's tapping into Matthew's strength using that. This is going to be my guide to write the first catechism for Christianity.
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Yeah, that's right. John Paul II in Catechesi Trudenzi says that Matthew is a catechist. And that's a really interesting way to describe him. Of course, in the Gospels it seems that the figure who is Matthew is also Levi. And although there's a line in Clement of Alexandria that push against that, there are some reasons to doubt that. I think it's actually right. I think Levi and Matthew are probably the same person. And what's interesting then is that Matthew's from the tribe of Levi, which is the priestly tribe. And of course this would have been the group of people who were the most well educated.
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The scribal class.
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The scribal class. And you know, there's a fascinating line in Matthew's gospel. In chapter 13 we have these parables of Jesus. And Jesus says, this is a parable only in Matthew. Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. Now that's a fascinating passage because if Matthew in fact is the apostle Levi, he's a tax collector. The Romans didn't want dunderheads collecting their money. Herod, obviously, he's a tax collector in Capernaum, probably, so probably working with the local government there. They didn't want morons collecting their money. They needed to have people who could keep records, who could keep track of things. Matthew, an accountant would have got that training, more likely as a member of a priestly family than someone just somewhere else. It would have been possible, but it fits really nicely. And what is Matthew saying here about the scribe? Well, the scribe is the one who knows the scriptures. They're the ones who know the traditions that have been passed down. And Matthew, knowing the scriptures as he does, recognizes that Jesus is fulfilling these stories in mighty ways. So it's appropriate that in the Gospel of Matthew, that's a theme that is highlighted throughout and bringing out what is new and what is old. Right. So this is what we find in the Gospel of Matthew, is Jesus is bringing about a new covenant. Right. That language isn't used specifically, but he does allude to Jeremiah 31, that promise of a new covenant. And so how is Jesus both bringing to fulfillment what we find in the Scriptures? And yet, as Paul says, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, you know, alluding to Isaiah. How does it go beyond that?
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Yeah, and I love the idea that he was probably, you know, with the name Levi, almost certainly from the priestly.
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Yeah.
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There's a priestly heritage there, trained in the scribal class and that, you know, he's working in this much more lucrative business of being a tax collector. And so that means he's in cahoots with Herod and the Roman Empire. And so that's why people see tax collectors as traitors, as Benedict Arnolds to the nation of Israel, because they're working for the oppressor.
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Right.
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But what I love is that here's Matthew, and if he did come from a priestly family, he knows the scriptures of Israel because he was trained as a scribe for that. He knows Israel's scriptural traditions and he knows the priestly background. But he's taken this more lucrative track. Right. For money. And when Jesus calls him, you know, what an arresting moment when you think about how he probably laments or there's a part of him that felt, well, I gave up being faithful Jew. I gave up being that heritage of being a Levi. And every time he was called Levi, he'd remember that. And I think, by the way, on that, you know, so many Jews who lived in the Hellenistic culture and were really working with people who were part of that Hellenistic, which is the Greco Roman culture today, would take a Greco Roman name as well as their Hebrew name. And so the idea that it was Matthew, that is probably the name he went by with the people he worked with, with Herod and the Romans, that may be one way in which he gets that name. So it's kind of interesting, I think if he would have gotten that name later on from Jesus, there probably would have been. That would have been recorded as a name given by Jesus. So the fact that he's not. I think it came earlier. But anyhow, so Matthew's identity really Gets Jesus taps into a deep reservoir that's in Matthew that Matthew then comes back to. But then Matthew comes back to the priesthood after being a sinner, and that's going to shape his thinking, too. And we could talk about that in light of mercy.
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Yeah. One thing I want to just piggyback on is that idea that he was working with the oppressors. This is really important for us to get our minds around. So there's a coin that you can see today. It's part of the kind of coins that the Romans minted, and it's called the Judea Capta coin, or there's a series of them, actually. And it's a pretty horrifying image, actually, because what it has is a Roman soldier and then this woman who's kind of like cowering in a corner. And what many people recognize is this is an image of the barbarity of the Romans who would attack women, who would take whatever they wanted from the people and brag about it. They thought this was something to celebrate. Look at how we just completely dominate these Judeans, right? And so to work for people who are in league with the Romans, the exploitation of Israel, it's to betray your own people. And why would you do that? Well, obviously you make more money working with them. So I'd just like to highlight a couple of passages. One is, in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, we have this statement of Jesus, if you love those who love you, what reward have you? What payment actually, in Greek, what payment have you? And then he says, do not even the tax collectors do the same. Now think about that for a second. Do not even the tax collectors. I mean, they're the scum of the earth, right? Even the worst of us, even the worst of the people of Israel, do this, right? Nothing to love those who pay you, right? That's what tax collectors do. So then we get to Matthew 9, and we have the story of the calling of someone who had sought to be paid by really those who are working against the people of Israel. I mean, again, these are people who were utterly savage. The Romans were utterly savage. I mean, they were the essential equivalent of terrorists today. Right? I mean, it would be the same thing if Jesus comes, says, hey, Peter, I brought someone to your house. Jesus is staying at Peter's house.
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I'm not sure what I think about the terrorist analogy, but I do think they're the occupiers.
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They're the occupiers.
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They're the occupiers.
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Fair enough.
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That have. And then the people who are then working within Israel, working with them, they're the Benedict Arnolds.
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Totally.
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And they're profiting Israel's subjugation.
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That's correct. That's right. So for Jesus to go by the tax collector's office, we read this in Matthew 9. He passed on from there. He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he rose and followed him. It's a remarkable story. And, you know, there's that great image of the calling of Matthew. And we talk about this in. In the Matthew Bible study. But if you look at the image, you see Jesus hand pointing towards Matthew.
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In the classic Caravaggio painting.
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In the classic Caravaggio. And then, of course, if you look at that carefully, Jesus hand is reminiscent, right?
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Yeah. No, it's taken right from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. It's the hand of Adam reaching out to God, but not reaching out a lot, but it's Adam's hand reaching out as God the Father is reaching out to Adam. And so he puts Adam's hand on Jesus because he's the new Adam.
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So Jesus is bringing about the new creation. In Matthew, who is turned away. This is so important because I remember when I was a college professor, I had a student come to my office and she had some questions for me about the course. I thought she had a question about one of the tests or maybe one of the requirements of the course, like the paper or something. It was very clear early on that was not her concern. She came to me and she basically sat down and said, I'm just not buying what you're selling in these theology classes, primarily the idea that God loves me. I know God doesn't love me. God hates me. God is sick and tired of me, wants nothing to do with me. I've done all kinds of horrible, shameful things. And this idea that God loves me is just ridiculous. I mean, how could that even be the case? And I was like a deer caught in the headlights, to be honest with you. Because, you know, we know, we hear about God's love for us so frequently, we forget how amazing that really is, that no matter how far you go from the Lord, you're never too far, that his hand is too short to reach you. And so I had to sit down with her and, you know, talk to her about, in fact, this is just not the case. And here in the story of Matthew, I have a beautiful illustration of this. That no matter what, no matter how far away you've gone, Jesus is Coming to bring his people back to himself.
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I think it's a beautiful story. And Matthew himself, I love it because he personally embodies the reception of God's mercy.
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Right, right.
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And that recreates Matthew and his identity. And I love that passage you mentioned at the end of chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew, where every scribe trained for the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. And Matthew saw himself as a scribe who, he thought he was a scribe in his family, his family business, his family legacy, then as a tax collector, you know, doing well in a world, and then called by Jesus and all of a sudden all that learning that he had done, he realized it wasn't for simply his own self aggrandizement and profit, it was for the kingdom of heaven. And that changed. That's a great moment as he realizes that. And you have to think about Matthew as a professional scribe. And we could talk about professional scribes in memorization and rabbinic schools. But now Matthew is following Jesus, and as a professional scribe, he would be listening to Jesus in a particular way that would be very attentive. And it's really fascinating. And Jesus knew that. But Matthew then realizes, all right, this is my background, this rabbi, this greatest teacher of Israel, this prophet, this messiah. He's called me for a purpose, to be a scribe for his kingdom, certainly.
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And you know what we find as we read through the Gospel of Matthew are all these amazing connections. Just to get it out of the way. If you read the fathers and doctors, they all understand that the gospel that we have in our Bibles is written by Matthew the apostle. A lot of people today raise questions about that. We don't have time to get in all the arguments here. One of them is, well, we find the calling of the story of Matthew in the Gospel of Mark. And there's good reason to think that at least the Greek version of Matthew that we have used Mark. And so why, if Matthew is written by, if Matthew is written by Matthew, why is Matthew telling his account of his calling just by using the language of Mark's Gospel? There is an answer for these kinds of things. For example, the early church says that Mark's Gospel is actually the result of Peter's preaching. And one of the things that's amazing about Matthew's Gospel is how much it emphasizes the role of Peter. So it makes perfect sense that Matthew would be telling the story in Peter's voice if Mark is Peter's gospel. But one of the amazing things we see in the early church, not just the tradition that he wrote a gospel, but that he originally actually wrote it in Hebrew. This is widely reported. And for example, Eusebius records the writings of Papias. And then Irenaeus says something similar. It's pretty widely received. Jerome. When Jerome is trying to translate the Gospel of Matthew into Latin, he runs into a word in the Sermon on the Mount that he doesn't know. It's a word that never appears anywhere else. Epiusios, we translate daily bread. And Jerome's really scratching his head over it. And you know what he does? Jerome says, I looked in Hebrew Matthew. Right. So Matthew doesn't just. I mean, sorry, Jerome doesn't just speculate that there was a Hebrew Matthew, Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Matthew. He actually had access to it in his day, which is really interesting. Right. So what is the relationship of Hebrew Matthew to Greek Matthew? These get really complicated. But one way or another, everything that we read in this gospel fits with an origin. By the way, this is a gospel. Most scholars say it's the most Jewish gospel. At least it's very Jewish. You know, if you're going to pick an apostle to associate with this gospel, okay, we're going to write a gospel and we're going to really use it to convince people from Israel that Jesus is the Messiah. Which apostles should we pick to, you know, associate with? You would not pick Matthew the tax collector. You would pick James, maybe. So the explanation that, you know, oh, well, they just picked the name out of the hat. It doesn't really work. Right. A lot of people say the titles of the gospels were added later, but that doesn't bear out in the manuscript tradition. All the manuscripts we have would seem to indicate that the titles were right there from the beginning. So at least the attributions were. So lots of things in this gospel really fit well. The idea of him as a scribe. Love that. We've talked about that in his connection. One other aspect, it's strong emphasis on economics. Right. Throughout the gospel, you get this idea of reward. Reward, which is payment, the idea of profit. What will it profit you if you gain the whole world and you lose your soul? Again, this fits in well with the idea that there was an apostle Jesus who did trade his soul at one point and then ended up experiencing the mercy of God.
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Yeah. No. One of the themes that I'm struck by in Matthew's gospel when we talk about the character of Matthew, is the idea of mercy because he received mercy. To be a tax collector and not only be forgiven, but to be called to be an apostle. Into the inner circle of Jesus to be given the highest authority of Jesus movement. That's really astonishing and remarkable. And so one of the passages that Matthew quotes a couple times is from Hosea 6, 6, you know, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And here's somebody, if he comes from a priestly family, he holds onto that verse as kind of one of his life verses, right? Because it would be so easy for the priestly class and for the chief priests to just talk about the temple and sacrifice and liturgy. But really what Matthew holds to is that God desires mercy and not sacrifice. Not just ritual sacrifice, but really a heart that is merciful and that gives mercy. And as somebody who received mercy from Christ, Matthew understands how important that is. And later on, again, a passage unique to Matthew, he has Jesus upbraiding the scribes and the pharisees in Matthew 23, verse 23. And he says, what are you scribes? And you Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you tithe, mint and dill and cumin, which is herbs. So they're even tithing not just the crops, but the herbal garden. And you have neglected the weightier matters of the law. And what are the weightier matters of the law for Matthew? Justice and mercy and faithfulness. And so here you get Matthew, who's, as you said, Michael earlier, he's at pains to show that Jesus is not undoing the law of Moses, but he's fulfilling it. But here he's at pains to show Jesus reveals not just something new, something new for Israel, but he reveals what was actually there from the beginning. The heart of the Torah is mercy and faithfulness.
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So that's so important. Right? And so Jesus throughout the Gospel is going to talk about how he's bringing fulfillment. What does it mean to fulfill the law? Well, later in the Gospel, we're going to see someone ask, what's the greatest commandment? He says to love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and of course, Matthew, all your mind. That's always right in Matthew's version there. But that idea of the transformation of the mind, which is in accordance with love. Right? And so that is what is at the heart of the law.
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Yeah, it's such a beautiful thing. And so many people who just think that law is exterior and cold and legalistic. Here's Matthew, who is teaching the new law of the new covenant of Christ. He's given us this catechism. And yet this catechism, which has a lot of teaching, it has a deep sense from its heart that it's got to be about mercy and faithfulness and love. And that permeates it. And unfortunately, people oftentimes pit love and mercy versus the law and teaching and doctrine. And Matthew would not understand that dichotomy. That's a dualism foreign to Matthew, and it's actually foreign to the word of God too. And that's important to know.
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That's right. And one more thing. I always like to point this out. Only in Matthew's Gospel do we find in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You wouldn't have that expression in the New Testament if it wasn't for what Jesus says in Matthew 28. Think about how important that is. Every prayer we begin, every the importance of that formula for baptism right there in Matthew's Gospel. So we could say so much Alice about it. We could go on for like, episodes and episodes and episodes.
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And we have, you know, and I hope everybody gets a chance to watch our Bible study, which is unformed on Matthew. It's an ongoing Bible study, and we just go leisurely through every chapter and every paragraph and almost every line in the Gospel of Matthew. And it's a real joy to do that. Well, you know, there's so much to learn from Matthew's Gospel and from Matthew himself. He's a great intercessor. If you know an accountant in your life, somebody who's maybe an engineer type, pray to Matthew for them. He's a great intercessor. If you know somebody who feels like they can never be reconciled to God and have fallen away from their faith, pray to Matthew for their intercession. Pray to Matthew today. Today's the grave grace for conversion for Matthew to intercede. And then for all of us, let's make sure. Has it been a number of years since you've read the Gospel of Matthew? Maybe you've never read the Gospel of Matthew. Well, you need to make a resolution today that you're going to read the Gospel of Matthew. And if you don't have something for your prayer time for the next month, I would suggest pick up the Gospel of Matthew and start praying through that. And if you want to really go deeper, go back and look at our episodes and become current, usually on Thursdays on formed, we do our Bible study on Matthew. And that will open up a window, hopefully, to make the reading and the praying with the Gospel of Matthew even richer. Right. And that's so powerful. And so Matthew is such a great example for us. He's such a great apostle. The Lord chose him for a reason. And God chooses each of us for all of our different skills and unique talents because he has a plan and he's a scribe for the kingdom. Matthew is. But some of us are to be moms and dads for the Kingdom of Heaven. Some of us are called to be a coach or whatever it is as a friend in our workplace. We're all called to be witnesses of the good news. And that's one of the great things that Matthew gives us in the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus tells us that we're all called to be light, the light of the world. And he begins the Sermon on the Mount with that image. And then he ends the Gospel of Matthew and Matthew 28 with what we know as the Great Commission that go forth and make disciples of all nations. So that's our mission as Christians. We have a mission, and Matthew gives us that. So when we read the mission in Matthew, it helps us to live it more faithfully. Well, I want to thank everybody who has supported us through the Mission Circle. You know, it's just a simple way in which so many of you have supported the Augustine Circle, you know, by $10 or more a month. You become a mission partner with us and you can just check out our Mission Circle website and it's easy to find at the top right corner of Form. You can just go to donate and you can find the link to the form webpage for the Mission Circle website. And everybody who supports us on that, we're deeply grateful for your support. It really helps us have this mission and it really blesses our mission. So we're grateful to you and may the Lord bless and keep you. Thank you. You can watch these interviews in video format by visiting formed.org formed is an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustine Institute and Ignatius Press with award winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, ebooks and family friendly kids programming to support the mission of the Augustan institute. Please visit missioncircle.org.