On Thursday, Sept. 21, we celebrate the Feast of St. Matthew. Matthew was, of course, the tax collector who was called by Jesus to follow Him, and who left his money changing table and followed Jesus immediately.  In the Gospels, we only get snapshots of the events, and because this is the first time we have encountered Matthew in the Gospel, we may presume that this was the first time Jesus and Matthew encountered one another. Chances are that Matthew had heard Jesus preaching, and his heart had been stirred. Matthew had his own history and was probably struggling with the life he had chosen. As a tax collector, he worked for the Romans, the oppressors of the Jewish people, making him both unclean and a hated collaborator with the enemy. His family and friends would have turned away from him, and he would not have been welcome in their homes. Tax collectors tended to be thieves who charged simple illiterate people more than they owed and pocketed the extra.
    
Matthew had an inner struggle and was despised by everyone who had ever been important in his life. He was ripe for the picking when Jesus turned to him and said, “Come and follow Me.” That night Matthew held a party in Jesus’ name, and his friends—other tax collectors, prostitutes, and other outcasts, attended as well. This was deeply offensive to the religious leaders of the time, and probably to Jesus’ own followers.
    
When Matthew wrote his Gospel, Mark had already written his, and Matthew had a copy in front of him. He had other material that Mark did not seem to have, especially the teachings of Jesus. We find that teaching contained in five discourses in Matthew’s Gospel, most notably in the Sermon on the Mount.
    
For those who are fans of the show The Chosen, you know that Matthew is one of the favorite characters on the show. He is portrayed as somewhere on the spectrum, meaning that he is very quirky and odd, but lovably so. From time to time, you see him writing down notes that he will probably use in writing his Gospel several years later.

This Saturday is the Feast of St. Pius of Pietrelcina, better known as Padre Pio. I have to admit that I really struggled for a long time with finding a connection to Padre Pio. Everything was about his special mystical abilities, such as bilocation, reading souls, and his stigmata. I did not identify with any of those things and did not think I ever would. He was a saint that could be admired but not emulated. 
    
At some point along the way, I saw a film that was in Italian with subtitles, about Padre Pio, which really went into who he was as a person. I saw his struggles and the incredible faith with which he faced and bore those struggles. The movie showed that his holiness was not in these spooky gifts that he had, but in his dedication to the Gospel and in his desire to become as much like Christ as possible. I could identify with those things.