He was sitting at the customs post.
To respectable society, Matthew was already a known quantity: a publican, a tax collector, a collaborator, a sinner. The sort of man religious people knew enough to avoid.
Then Jesus stopped.
“Follow me.”
And Matthew got up.
For the Feast of St. Matthew, Chesterton Radio goes beyond the familiar saint’s biography to ask a more provocative question: Why did Jesus choose Matthew the publican?
Using two classic radio portrayals—Matthew the Publican from The Greatest Story Ever Told and St. Matthew the Apostle from The Ave Maria Hour—we return to first-century Galilee and the customs table where an unlikely Apostle received his call.
Who were the publicans, and why were they so despised? Was Matthew also the Levi described by Mark and Luke? What do we actually know about Matthew the Apostle, the traditions surrounding Matthew the Evangelist, and the Gospel that bears his name? And what did Jesus mean when, surrounded by tax collectors and sinners, He answered His critics:
“I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”
We also enter the shadows and light of Caravaggio’s extraordinary Calling of Saint Matthew, where the entire drama of conversion seems compressed into a pointing hand, a shaft of light, and one astonished man wondering whether Christ could possibly mean him.
And through it all runs a wonderfully Chestertonian paradox.
The publican becomes an Apostle.
The collector of debts becomes a herald of mercy.
The man everyone thought they had accounted for becomes God’s surprise.
Because Christ did not merely sit down at Matthew’s table.
He called Matthew to leave it.
A Chesterton Radio Deep Dive for the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist — September 21.
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Matthew the Publican - Greatest Story Ever Told
St. Matthew The Apostle - Ave Maria Hour
