Follow me. The man got up and followed him (Mt 9:9-13)

Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew

Matthew 9:9–13

⁹Leaving that place, Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. ¹⁰Now it happened that Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, and a large number of tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, «Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?» ¹²When Jesus heard this, he said to them, «It is not the healthy who needs a doctor, but the sick. ¹³Go and learn what this saying means: »I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

It's noon in Capernaum, and the most hated man in town is counting coins. No one approaches him—people cross the street, almost spitting as they pass his shop. Matthew knows this: he sold his soul to Rome, pocketing his neighbors' hatred with every tax collected. Then a shadow stops in front of his desk. Two words, barely: "Follow me." No explanation, no preconditions, no repentance demanded. The man with the falsified accounts gets up, leaves everything—the money, the ledgers, the bitter security of his collection—and follows a stranger. That very evening, his house is full: former colleagues from the tax collectors' office, fallen women, outcasts of all kinds, gathered around the table with this rabbi who fears nothing. Outside, the decent people who have always done the right thing are choking with indignation. And it was there, amidst spilled wine and too much laughter, that Jesus uttered the phrase that shattered all religious categories: he did not come for those who need nothing.

Why God prefers the table of sinners to the throne of the righteous

A word about the call that shakes you to your core, the mercy that disturbs, and the place God has in store for you—even if you think you don't deserve any.

This text is for you if you sometimes feel too broken for faith, too far removed, too compromised. It recounts the plea of a despised man, the shock of a scandalous meal, and a phrase that overturns all logic of religious merit. You will find solace in it if guilt has kept you away from God—and food for thought if, like the Pharisees, you keep your distance from those who "don't deserve it.".

We will begin by examining the very concrete context of this scene in Capernaum, then analyze the central gesture: an unconditional call. Three areas will then explore the text's significance: Matthew's identity, the scandal of the shared meal, and the quotation from Hosea on mercy. This will be followed by the implications for your daily life, the voices of tradition that have meditated on this passage for twenty centuries, a time for Lectio Divina, and practical suggestions for allowing this message to work within you.

A collector's office by the lake

Capernaum is not a remote village. It is a bustling trading hub, situated on the road linking Damascus to the Mediterranean, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Where goods pass, so do taxes—and therefore tax collectors, those local officials employed by Herod Antipas's administration or directly by Rome to collect tolls and customs duties. Matthew, whom the Gospel of Mark calls Levi, runs a shop near the border post, where caravans and fishermen travel.

The profession of tax collector is not only unpopular; it is structurally corrupt. The Roman system operates on a leasehold basis—the state sells the right to collect taxes in advance, and the collector recoups his investment by taking a cut from the taxpayers. In practical terms, this means that the more Matthew extorts, the richer he becomes. In the eyes of his fellow Jews, he is therefore not merely a cog in the foreign occupation; he is a traitor fattening himself at the expense of his own people, a willing collaborator with the oppressor.

In the religious mindset of the time, this collaboration had a radical consequence: the tax collector was ritually impure. He handled pagan money bearing Caesar's image, he associated with non-Jews, he lived a life of organized fraud. In rabbinic texts, he was classified alongside thieves and murderers—a category of outcasts whom one could neither call as witnesses in court nor associate with without defiling oneself. To be a tax collector was to be socially dead within the community of Israel, while still remaining alive.

It is precisely this man whom Jesus glances at "as he goes." The Greek text uses a participle that suggests continuous movement: Jesus does not stop to observe; he sees as he walks, and it is this moving gaze that becomes a call. Nothing in the narrative indicates any preparation, confession, or sign of repentance on Matthew's part. The call precedes everything. This is where the central paradox arises, a paradox that the rest of the text will develop.

The call that asks for nothing before giving everything

Ordinary religious logic operates in stages: one purifies oneself, one repents, one becomes worthy, and only then can one approach God. Jesus reverses this sequence almost brutally. He doesn't tell Matthew, "First change your ways, then come back to me." He says, "Follow me"—two words, a stark imperative, addressed to a man engaged in tax evasion, sitting at his post of organized sin.

This reversal is not a mere narrative detail: it is the theological heart of the text. The call does not reward a conversion already accomplished; it triggers it. Matthew rises—the Greek verb used, egertheis, is the same as that of the resurrection. The evangelist deliberately chooses a word that evokes a rising from the dead, as if leaving this office were equivalent to emerging from the tomb. Grace precedes merit; it does not presuppose it, it creates it.

And this grace comes at an immediate, visible, material price: Matthieu abandons his livelihood. Unlike the fishermen Pierre, André, Jacques, and Jean, who can return to their nets after a disappointing catch, Matthieu cannot return to his post as a collector once he leaves—his position will be immediately reassigned to someone else. His departure is therefore irreversible. It is an act of total rupture, both economic and social, from the very moment the call is made.

What's even more striking is what Matthew does with his newfound freedom: he throws a feast. The man freed from his fraudulent office doesn't need months to become "respectable" again before daring to invite Jesus to his home. He acts immediately, with the spontaneity of someone who has just breathed for the first time in years—and he invites all those who still resemble him.

The meal that scandalizes respectable people

The meal scene is the true dramatic center of the text, even more so than the calling itself. Eating together in the ancient Mediterranean world was never a neutral act: sharing a table meant recognizing the other as an equal, accepting their presence in one's most intimate space. By sitting down to eat at Matthew's house, amidst tax collectors and those whom the text simply calls "sinners"—undoubtedly people excluded for their professions deemed immoral, such as prostitutes or usurers—Jesus makes a public gesture of considerable social significance.

The Pharisees are not fooled. Their question—"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"—is not mere curiosity; it is an accusation disguised as a question. They don't even address Jesus directly; they go through the disciples, as if to emphasize that this behavior disqualifies the teacher himself from any serious theological dialogue. A rabbi worthy of the name does not share a table of impurity.

What this indignation reveals is a reversed conception of holiness based on contagion: in the Pharisaic mindset, it is the impure that defiles the pure, never the other way around. To approach a sinner is to risk one's own ritual purity. Jesus completely reverses this logic: it is not the sinner who contaminates the righteous, but the presence of God that heals the sinner. Holiness, for him, is not fragile—it is contagious in the other direction.

There is something dizzying about observing the exact composition of the guests around this table. Matthew has just been called; he has followed Jesus for only a few hours, perhaps only moments. And yet, his first act as a disciple is to gather all those he still knows—his former colleagues, his friends from the margins—to bring them into the presence of the one who has just saved him. The new convert becomes, without delay, a man of instinctive evangelization: he doesn't keep Jesus to himself; he immediately shares what he has just received.

Mercy rather than sacrifice: the phrase that changes everything

Jesus' response begins with a disarmingly simple medical image: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." This seemingly innocuous statement, however, overturns the instinctive religious hierarchy. It implies that Jesus defines himself as a doctor—an identity that entails physical proximity to illness, never protective distance.

But it is the following sentence that delivers the true theological shock: «Go and learn what this means: »I desire mercy, not sacrifice.«» Jesus is quoting the prophet Hosea (Hosea 6:6), a text every Pharisee knows by heart. By sending his interlocutors to “learn” a verse they already know how to recite, Jesus is not accusing them of biblical ignorance—he is accusing them of never having allowed this verse to affect their daily lives. One can know Scripture by heart and completely miss its meaning.

The Hebrew word translated as "mercy," hesed, goes far beyond mere sentimental compassion: it signifies the loyal fidelity of a covenant, that tenacious attachment God maintains toward his people even when they betray him. By quoting Hosea, Jesus is therefore not proposing a vague ethic of kindness: he is affirming that God himself, throughout the history of Israel, has always preferred faithful relationship to formal ritual. Sacrifice without mercy is but an empty shell.

This hierarchy does not abolish worship—it subordinates it. Sacrifice has its place, but only as an expression of an already existing relationship, never as a substitute for it. A scrupulous Pharisee can multiply ritual observances while categorically refusing to sit next to a repentant sinner: it is precisely this contradiction that Jesus comes to denounce, not out of contempt for ritual, but because ritual disconnected from mercy becomes a spiritual fraud, symmetrical to Matthew's tax fraud.

What this text changes in your life, concretely

First, in your personal life: if you carry a guilt that keeps you at a distance from God, this text tells you that the call does not depend on any prior purification. You don't have to "earn" your place at the table before sitting down. Matthew's action—getting up immediately, without negotiation—becomes a model: conversion begins with action, not with a perfect examination of conscience.

In your relationships, then: who do you avoid today out of a reflex of purity? The text invites you to identify your own Pharisaical tendencies—those distances you maintain, sometimes unconsciously, with people you consider too flawed, too compromised, too different. Mercy is not an optional spiritual choice: it is the very criterion by which God defines himself.

Socially, this text also raises questions about your affiliations. Matthew doesn't hide his former tax collector friends after his conversion: he brings them together around Jesus. Does your faith lead you to sever ties with your past, or to become a bridge between them and Christ? Authentic conversion doesn't flee the environments from which it comes—it returns to them, transformed, to bear witness.

Finally, in your church life, this text questions how your community welcomes—or fails to welcome—those who arrive burdened by a difficult past, a tarnished reputation, and a life that is still visibly disordered. A parish faithful to this Gospel is more like Matthew's table than a circle of already healthy people.

The patristic, liturgical and martyrological echo of the text

John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Matthew (Homily 30), dwells at length on Matthew's eagerness to rise without delay: he sees in this proof that the soul, once touched by grace, needs no prolonged deliberation to respond. He also emphasizes that Matthew, in writing his Gospel himself, never conceals his former, shameful profession—a sign, according to him, of genuine humility that does not seek to erase his past but to make it a source of praise.

Jerome of Stridon, in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, emphasizes the contrast between the fishermen's call and the tax collector's call: the former leave behind their nets, while Matthew leaves behind money itself, making his detachment even more radical. Jerome also notes that Matthew, in his own account, humbly attributes to himself the derogatory name of "tax collector," whereas the Gospel of Mark, written by a third party, prefers to call him Levi—a subtle sign that the evangelist is writing from a heightened awareness of his former life before receiving grace.

Augustine of Hippo, in his Sermons (particularly Sermon 87), reflects on the quotation from Hosea to affirm that God never rejects a sacrifice offered with a merciful heart, but rejects any sacrifice that would claim to replace the conversion of the heart. He connects this scene to his own experience as a late convert, reading in Matthew's call the promise that no life, however scattered, is beyond the reach of grace.

Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Matthew within the Catena Aurea, compiles these patristic readings and highlights a structural detail: Jesus calls Matthew "in passing," an apparently innocuous gesture which nevertheless reveals a providence at work in the ordinary — God does not wait for solemn circumstances to turn an existence upside down.

Liturgically, this passage is traditionally proclaimed on the Feast of Saint Matthew, September 21, when the Church celebrates this radical transformation of the tax collector into apostle and evangelist. The liturgy deliberately chooses this text to remind us that holiness is never measured by a social or moral starting point, but by the response given to the call. This same passage also appears frequently in Ordinary Time as the Gospel reading for the week, offering the congregation regular meditation on mercy as the key to understanding all of God's actions.

In the martyrological tradition, it is held that Matthew, according to ancient traditions reported in particular by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History, continued his preaching beyond Palestine before dying as a martyr — the one who was called "in passing" becoming, until the end, a man who never ceased to rise up to follow.

For a more contemporary perspective, we can cite Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, even before his election as Pope Francis, who chose as his episcopal motto Miserando atque eligendo — «looking upon him with mercy, he chose him» — directly inspired by a homily by Bede the Venerable on the scene of Matthew’s calling. This motto, which also became his papal motto, perfectly encapsulates the theology of the text: Jesus’ gaze precedes and grounds the choice; mercy never waits for merit to act.

Lectio divina

Let this word work within you

Start by slowly rereading the scene, putting yourself in Matthew's place sitting at his desk. Note, without judging them, the "offices" where you yourself are sitting today — the habits, the compromises, the areas of your life that you think are unworthy of a call.

Next, choose someone you avoid, either instinctively or out of judgment, and ask yourself what it would mean, concretely this week, to share a meal or a moment with them. Not to convert them, simply to sit next to them as Jesus sat next to the tax collectors.

Finally, return to Hosea's words—"I desire mercy, not sacrifice"—and identify in your religious practice what constitutes a heartless ritual. A concrete act of mercy this week is worth more than repeated, loveless observances.

What this text says in an era of sorting and merit

Our era largely operates on the logic of merit: we judge, classify, and sort according to performance, respectability, and conformity to social norms. Social media amplifies this Pharisaical reflex on an unprecedented scale—we publicly designate who deserves indignation, who deserves exclusion, often without any possibility of appeal or recourse.

This text directly resists this culture of permanent banishment. It does not deny the gravity of Matthew's sin—the fraud, the collaboration, the social injustice are real and named as such. But it refuses to let this gravity become an irrevocable sentence. Mercy is not the negation of the evil committed: it is the conviction that no one is reducible to their worst act.

This nuance is invaluable today, when the demand for justice is sometimes confused with the refusal of any rehabilitation. The Church itself is not immune to the Pharisaical temptation: welcoming sinners in words remains easier than welcoming them in deeds, at its table, in its responsibilities, in its daily interactions.

Prayer

Lord, you who passed by my office without first asking me to explain myself, I thank you for that gaze which precedes all merit. You saw Matthew amidst his falsified accounts and you did not wait for him to change before calling him—teach me to believe that you see me that way too, in my own unresolved compromises.

You who sat at the table of sinners without fear of soiling yourself, grant me your quiet audacity. May I cease to measure who deserves my presence and who does not; may I cease to sort the guests at my own inner table according to criteria you never established.

Teach me what it truly means to "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." May my religious gestures never become a barrier between you and those you love. May I always prefer a living relationship to empty observance, a shared meal to a judgment pronounced from afar.

And when the time comes for me to rise—to leave what holds me back, this office where I count my false securities—grant me the promptness of Matthew. Let no hesitation delay my response to your call. Amen.

Get up now

There's no perfect time to get up from your desk. Matthew didn't wait until he'd finished his day's accounts, or until he'd settled his situation with Rome, or until he was inwardly ready. The call came, and he got up—in that instant, with all that he still was, imperfect and compromised.

This text doesn't ask you to be worthy before responding. It asks you to stand up. Today, now, with who you are. The table is already set, and the place that awaits you has never depended on your merit.

Practices

Share a meal this week with someone you usually avoid, without any intention of judging or correcting them.

Identify an "office" in your life — a habit, a grey area — and simply name it before God, without justifying yourself.

Reread Hosea 6:6 every morning for a week, asking yourself where your religious practice needs more heart.

Write down the name of someone you easily judge, and pray for them before you pray for yourself.

Choose a concrete act of mercy rather than a new ritual resolution this month.

References

Antiquity and the Fathers (1st–5th centuries)

• John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily XXX — meditation on Matthew's promptness to get up without delay, understood as a sign of a soul touched by grace and needing no prolonged deliberation.
• Jerome of Stridon, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew — analysis of the contrast between the call of the fishermen and that of the tax collector, and of the humility of Matthew who attributes to himself this contemptuous name in his own story.
• Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, Sermon 87 — meditation on the quotation from Hosea affirming that God rejects any sacrifice that would claim to replace the conversion of the heart, illuminated by the author's personal experience of late conversion.
• Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History — source of ancient traditions on the preaching and martyrdom of Matthew beyond Palestine.

Late Fathers and the Middle Ages (5th–15th centuries)

• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, commentary on Matthew — compilation of patristic readings highlighting providence at work in the seemingly innocuous gesture of calling "in passing".
• Bede the Venerable, homily on the calling of Matthew — source of the expression Miserando atque eligendo, later taken up as an episcopal and pontifical motto.

Contemporary (20th–21st centuries)

• Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio), episcopal and pontifical motto Miserando atque eligendo — theological summary of the text according to which the merciful gaze of Jesus precedes and grounds the choice of the called.

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