THE YEAR OF MATTHEW

By Mark Biolo, OSB Cam

Matthew is the evangelist of the Church’s first liturgical cycle, Cycle A, and his Gospel is proclaimed thirty-two times over the course of the year. Matthew’s Gospel consists of twenty-eight chapters divided into 1064 verses; 593, or a little more than half, are read in the Sunday Masses during the year of Cycle A.

Even though Matthew is Jewish, he was likely influenced by Greek culture because his Gospel was written in Greek and he was very familiar with Scripture. He was obviously writing for a Jewish community because he took it for granted that Jewish laws and customs were well known by his readers. Matthew used the medium of story to punctuate the message of salvation through Jesus. However, it is not Matthew’s concern to write a detailed biographical sketch of Jesus. The message is more important than the facts of history. Matthew, you see, is a preacher, not a historian.

The Matthean community was a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, but the majority were apparently Jewish Christians. By the time of Matthew’s Gospel, most likely written around 85 AD, after the Jewish revolt of 70 A.D., the Jewish structure had changed. The Temple was no more. The Jews were no longer formed by the Temple rituals and there was a major shift in what it meant to be Jewish. The identity of God’s people was uncertain. And it had become clear that not all Israel was going to accept Jesus as the Messiah of Jewish expectations. In addition, non-Jews began to represent a very promising missionary field.

The beginning point for Matthew’s community is that they must be Jewish. Matthew understood his role as one of getting to the heart of Jewish tradition, while breathing new life into this tradition which was regarded as sacrosanct. His Gospel is a response to a community in transition. This transition was of astronomical proportion for those living in Matthew’s ancient cultural milieu. The transition involved moving from one age, embedded in Palestinian Judaism, to a new, expanded religious and social world. From beginning to end Matthew’s Gospel reveals this tension between tradition and newness.

In his writing Matthew is encouraging a largely Jewish-Christian community to recognize itself as the legitimate heir of God’s promise to Israel. A major thrust of his Gospel is to show the continuity between Israel of old and the new things that God has done in Christ. Matthew also wishes to broaden the missionary horizon to include the Gentiles. So if the question is: “After the coming of Jesus who are God’s people and who inherits the Kingdom of God?”, Matthew’s answer is simple -Those who follow Jesus are God’s people.

Matthew’s Gospel is a collection of stories that portray Jesus as a powerful and living person. By means of these vivid stories we are invited to become part of the story of Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God. Matthew did not compose his Gospel entirely out of his own experience. He appears to have had at his disposal several written sources. He draws heavily from Mark in certain sections and since Mark wrote before Matthew, it is fair to call Matthew’s Gospel a revised and expanded version of Mark.

Furthermore, in about two hundred verses Matthew and Luke are so much alike that it seems reasonable to assume that both evangelists made independent use of a common source. This source was a collection of Jesus’ sayings written in Greek that circulated in the middle of the first century. This source used by Matthew and Luke is usually designated by the letter “Q” (from the German word for source, Quelle). Finally, Matthew had access to sayings and stories that no other evangelist had. This material peculiar to Matthew is often designated by the letter “M”.

Although Mark begins his Gospel with Jesus’ adult years, Matthew goes back to His birth and infancy in chapters 1-2. Mark ends his Gospel with the death of Jesus and the discovery of the empty tomb. Matthew follows Mark very closely in chapters 26-28 but he adds the story of Jesus appearing to the eleven disciples in Galilee. Between chapters 1-2 and chapters 26-28, Matthew presents five major speeches by Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount (chs 5-7), the missionary discourse (ch 10), the parables discourse (ch 13), the advice to a divided community (ch 18) and the eschatological (“end times”) discourse (chs 24-25).

We must not assume that these five speeches are exact transcripts of sermons given by Jesus on five occasions. Rather, everything about them indicates that Matthew has constructed the speeches out of traditional materials and imposed upon them their present literary structure. The five speeches are an important structure in the Gospel, and they are separated from one another by large blocks of narrative material. Matthew is obviously interested in Jesus the teacher and he went to great lengths to highlight these perspectives.

Matthew’s Gospel has a strongly Jewish flavor. Its special concerns are to place Jesus of Nazareth within the traditions of God’s chosen people and to show how this same Jesus burst the bonds of those traditions and brought them to fulfillment. Matthew takes great pains to point out how the events of Jesus’ life fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, at certain points Jesus seems to contradict or abolish some precepts of the law. He can do so because, as the Son of God, he is the authoritative interpreter of the Jewish tradition.

Matthew is a fairly easy Gospel to read and it is filled with the “Good News” of Jesus the Christ. It is an excellent way to come to know Jesus in our own life and times.