(Caravaggio, 1599-1600)
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This is a remarkable story, and one, it seems to me, that is characteristically Christian.
It’s easy to imagine how today’s critics and journalists would have reacted to the calling of Matthew/Levi to the Twelve.
Journalists would undertake investigations into his past dealings, eagerly interviewing people with tales to tell of his shady transactions, his unfairness, his greed, his history of self-seeking collaboration with an oppressive regime. Critics of the Church would triumphantly parade all of these stories before the public — some of them perhaps true, many of them dubious and distorted if not altogether false — demanding to know whether this is really the sort of man that the Lord would call into his service. “Isn’t Christianity just Matthew’s latest scam?” they would suggest. “What kind of a movement is this,” they would inquire of their audience, “that is made up, to significant degree, of semi-literate rural peasants, rapacious tax-farmers, and, in at least the case of Judas, somebody with a known history of extremist political views?”
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