Call to discipleship

After completing the ceremony of his own baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus is now all set to begin his public life and thus gradually fulfil the mission entrusted to him by the Father. This mission was that of announcing God's plan of universal salvation and laying down the foundation for it by gathering a group of 12 closest friends and other disciples, who would eventually be ready to continue his work after his own Passion and Death.

At this time Jesus must have already been about 30 years old, and the time before his death on the cross after his three years of public life was, in human terms, not at all a long one in view of the extraordinarily rich and important bequest he was to leave behind him.

The call of Matthew as the first of his 12 disciples finds its parallel in the other two Synoptics, Mark and Luke. When one reads the text in today's Gospel one remains struck by two things. The first is the haphazard way in which Jesus invites Matthew to follow him. "As Jesus was going further on his way, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at work, collecting taxes. Jesus just addressed to him these two words: 'Follow me'."

The second is this: Matthew does not at all ask, for example, 'whereto?', or 'what for?', as any of us would have done in his place. The promptness by which Matthew obeys Our Lord's request was indeed astounding, as is evident from what follows in the same text: "And Matthew rose from his place and followed Jesus." As we know, the call of the remaining 11 disciples, later known as Apostles, took place more or less in the same way.

I cannot think of any possible human explanation for all the above. A possible one could have been Our Lord's extraordinarily attractive and impressive personality, which so struck his disciples as to make them abandon there and then whatever they were doing and leave no room in their mind for any doubts about the worthwhileness of responding to that call. To us it may all seem haphazard; but we must then keep in mind that Jesus surely knew them well inside out, and that at the same time the grace attached to that invitation was so powerful as to exclude altogether the need for any further explanation.

In the case of Matthew, about which we read in today's Gospel, the disciple's prompt response to Our Lord's call was followed by another invitation: this time addressed by Matthew himself to Jesus. This was an invitation to dinner in Matthew's own house, to which, as we read, "many publicans and sinners were to be found at table with him". Some Pharisees, who were also guests at Matthew's dinner, could not help feigning surprise at the fact that Jesus was mixing and even socialising with sinners, as tax collectors like Matthew himself were looked down upon.

When Jesus chooses his own disciples, he does not so much look at what they are, but rather at what they would allow him to make out of them. The work to be set before the Apostles was to be one overriding all human possibilities.

Their work was to be God's work, and the disciples' contribution was just allowing God to turn them into effective instruments in his hands. This applies also to each one of us Christians. We too are called by God, first to become His children through baptism, and then to grow as genuine Christians and radiate around us His universal message of love and salvation.