Hello everyone.
Hey yo! Welcome back to Scattering Flowers with Elise and Miles, a podcast where you read the daily Gospels and the Saint of the Day.
Let’s get started.
Today is Monday, September 21st, and the scripture to reflect on is Matthew 9:9.
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, ‘Follow me,’ and he rose and followed him.
Remember over the summer when we covered the one, two, threes of each of Jesus’s disciples?
Jesus called all different kinds of people to follow him.
Some of the disciples were fishermen, but Matthew was a tax collector.
In Jesus’s day, people hated tax collectors.
They took more money than they should.
Jesus always gives us a second chance.
Many people were angry that Jesus had time for sinners.
Jesus told them that the sick need a doctor, and not the well, just like sinners need a savior and not the perfect.
Matthew was a thief and not very nice.
Jesus gave him another chance.
Matthew left behind his old life to follow Jesus.
Sometimes we get angry with people that don’t want to give them a second chance.
Maybe if someone calls names and steals a toy, but we can forgive them even if they don’t deserve it.
Matthew wanted all his friends to experience this forgiveness and meet Jesus, so he invited them to his house.
We too can tell our friends about Jesus.
Today’s Saint of the Day is Saint Matthew the Evangelist.
He was born in the first century and died in 68 A.D.
He is the patron saint of bankers and bookkeepers.
Matthew called Levi, lived on a lake, and in the first Gospel was written by Matthew, in which he speaks of his call to be an apostle.
Sitting on his desk one day, he saw Christ come to him.
When the Lord said to him, Follow me, he at once left his work and followed the Master.
People were surprised to see a Roman tax collector become one of the special friends and disciples of the Master.
Matthew also tells us of a banquet he gave that Christ attended.
It was a public farewell to his former friends.
Many publicans and sinners came to sit down with Jesus and his disciples.
Jesus said, I have come not to call the just, but sinners.
Matthew wrote his Gospel to convince the Jews that the Messiah has come in the person of Jesus Christ.
His symbol is a young man because he begins his Gospel with Christ’s earthly ancestry and stresses his human and kingly character.
He preached the Gospel among the Hebrews for fifteen years.
He is also called the Apostle of Ethiopia.
His shrine is also at Salerno in southern Italy.
Let’s pray.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Dear God, thank you for not leaving anyone out, and help me to tell my friends about you.
And also help us to follow you no matter what we’re doing.
Saint Matthew the Evangelist, pray for us.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thank you so much for listening.
We’ll be back tomorrow.
Scattering more flowers.
See ya.