One of the most well-known stories told in Christian communities is the story of Jesus calling Levi (later known as Matthew), who is a tax collector, to come and follow him. This story opens a window giving us a glimpse into Matthew's life, what he values, who or what is important to him. We realize that a Jew who is a tax collector is someone who has made a choice to "sell out" to the Roman occupiers and collect taxes for them. He also charges exorbitantly because he is personally giving himself a cut of the proceeds. Obviously for these twin reasons he is not welcome among Jews, no longer part of the Jewish community. Just as obviously, that is not important to Levi. He has made his choice. Acceptance by the Romans and the opportunity that affords him to make money is the most important choice of his life.
Until he meets Jesus.
The above oil painting by the Italian realist artist Caravaggio catches the dramatic moment of Jesus' summons. Caravaggio paints Jesus going to find Levi at his place of "work."
"Caravaggio represented the event as a nearly silent, dramatic narrative. The sequence of actions before and after this moment can be easily and convincingly re-created. The tax-gatherer Levi (Saint Matthew's name before he became the apostle) was seated at a table with his four assistants, counting the day's proceeds, the group lighted from a source at the upper right of the painting. Christ, His eyes veiled, with His halo the only hint of divinity, enters with Saint Peter. A gesture of His right hand, all the more powerful and compelling because of its languor, summons Levi. Surprised by the intrusion and perhaps dazzled by the sudden light from the just-opened door, Levi draws back and gestures toward himself with his left hand as if to say, "Who, me?", his right hand remaining on the coin he had been counting before Christ's entrance.....
"Christ's appearance is so unexpected and His gesture so commanding as to suspend action for a shocked instant, before reaction can take place. In another second, Levi will rise up and follow Christ - in fact, Christ's feet are already turned as if to leave the room. The particular power of the picture is in this cessation of action. It utilizes the fundamentally static medium of painting to convey characteristic human indecision after a challenge or command and before reaction." (from Caravaggio.org.)
"Who, me?" Isn't that always our first reaction when we believe that Jesus the Christ is calling us to do something, always through the events and choices of our daily lives? Because Jesus the Christ always searches for us at our "place of work," in the middle of our busy, often frenzied lives, when and where we least expect him or even want him to be. Bishop Robert Barron gives us further insight.
"Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus calls Matthew to become his disciple.
Jesus gazed at this man and said simply, “Follow me.” Did Jesus invite Matthew because the tax collector merited it? Was Jesus responding to a request from Matthew or some hidden longing in the sinner’s heart? Certainly not. Grace, by definition, comes unbidden and without explanation.
"In Caravaggio’s magnificent painting of this scene, Matthew responds to Jesus’ summons by pointing incredulously to himself and wearing a quizzical expression, as if to say, “Me? You want me?” (from Bishop Robert Barron's Daily Gospel Reflection from January 16.)
Yet Jesus the Christ intended to turn Levi's life upside down to set it right.
The story of Raoul Wallenberg (pictured above) vividly illustrates how Jesus can unexpectedly call us. "Me? You want me?" must have been thirty-two year old Swedish retail businessman Raoul Wallenberg's first reaction when he was asked to radically change his life's plans. He worked for a small Swedish trading company doing business with and having an office in Budapest, Hungary, and could speak both German and Hungarian. He also had attended college to study architectural design in the United States. In 1944, he was amazed when both Swedish and United States representatives asked him to travel to Budapest, Hungary, as a temporary Swedish diplomat collaborating with the American War Refugee Board. His mission was to rescue as many Jews as possible from the Nazis (who had conquered Hungary at this point) who were persecuting and also exterminating them.
Why should Raoul say "yes"? Why should he enter a scene of misery, bloodshed and danger? After all, he came from a rich, aristocratic family, and delighted aesthetically in fine food, wine, architecture, art. But his life to this point had prepared him for this. He was Christian, but he also often boasted that his ancestry was one sixteenth part Jewish. He had spent five years in Haifa and personally met Jewish refugees from war-torn Germany. He considered himself a world citizen with responsibility to the world. And so, he said "yes."
In six months, he had managed to save the lives of at least 20,000 Jews.
Ingrid Carlberg, author of "Raoul Wallenberg: the Biography" tells us
"...he was another kind of hero altogether, not just some Superman carrying out brave deeds on his own, as he is often described. This happened, but what made me really admire him was the incredible energy he put into the mission in Budapest, the bureaucracy, the remarkable organisation. That was what made the difference. He had 350 people employed by the end of 1944. He and his closest collaborators, who were all Hungarian Jews who had gotten Swedish protective papers, made this organisation function as a well-organised company. It was magic, under those terrible, anarchic, circumstances, where people were killed in the streets, and marched off on foot to a certain death."
Raoul had great natural gifts, an artistic and dramatic flair, a desire for action. He cleverly designed and had reproduced a fake Swedish passport, which Germans thought was the "real thing," and distributed them to as many Jews as possible to protect them. His huge organization delivered food to tens of thousands of Jews, set up a hospital, and had their own security force which went out into the streets to save Jews in danger of death.
"With the money mostly raised for the War Refugee Board by American Jews, Wallenberg rented 32 buildings in Budapest and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity. He put up signs such as 'The Swedish Library' and 'The Swedish Research Institute' on their doors and hung oversized Swedish flags on the front of the buildings to bolster the deception. The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people." (Wikipedia.)
On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Russians, Raoul decided to visit their headquarters. He hoped to interest the Russian military leaders in his detailed humanitarian post-war plans for the impoverished and starving Hungarians, both Christian and Jewish, in Budapest. But Wallenberg was detained and later imprisoned by the Russians on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared.
At first the Russians reported that he died on 17 July 1947 while imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the prison at the headquarters of the KGB secret police in Moscow. Over the years, their story changed often. At first his death was from a heart attack, then from poison, then he was shot. However, for decades into the 1980's, released prisoners spoke of speaking with a Swedish prisoner who claimed he was an unlawfully imprisoned Swedish diplomat. The Russians still refuse to release files from that period. The mystery of how and when Raoul Wallenberg died has been a terrible, poignant mystery for his family, and indeed for the world, to this day.
Raoul was very close to his family and friends and wrote letters home as often as possible. In them he often mused about what he saw right then as the purpose, or overarching Story, of his life. Expecting to be able to return home in six months or so, he wrote "I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself that I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible.” Another deeply held belief of his was: "One person can make a difference.” These words and values, these choices, tell us the overarching Story of his life was to always and everywhere be For Others.
Although Raoul was baptized and raised a Christian, he was essentially a quiet, reticent man who did not reveal his spirituality. Yet at least one person in Budapest spoke of encountering in him the depth of divine love. I believe that as soon as Raoul said "yes" to Christ - who first spoke to him in the voices of those Swedish and American representatives, and indeed called out to him in the voices of thousands of Jews - Divine Grace poured over him and into him so that he accomplished extraordinary things. Divine Grace pours into us whenever we say "yes" to Jesus the Christ when he comes to visit us where we live. Grace that can inspirit us to do extraordinary things because we are affecting other people's lives, and no life is ordinary to God. The greatest obstacle to our saying "yes" to him is the hardness of our hearts.
What do our daily choices tell us about the overarching Story of our lives? Even though we may have said "yes" to Jesus the Christ from time to time, do we still have hearts poisoned by the overarching Story of Society? It is the Overarching Story of Cultures for all time. All Societies try to influence our values with their false values:
The overwhelming importance of being part of the Winning Team - for Matthew it was the Romans and for many Germans and Hungarians, the winning team was the Nazis.
The overwhelming importance of money, good food, wine, art, luxurious homes, and cars, which tempts our hearts to greed. Matthew was greedy for money, which could buy whatever luxuries he wanted. Today, our capitalistic society has been poisoned by consumerism. Our tvs and computers are bombarded with ads for every luxury we could imagine. In our society the worst "sin" is to be poor, because that means we haven't worked hard enough to accumulate money and luxury items. This leads to both selfishness and never feeling satisfied. We want more and more. How often do we buy just to get that "high" that comes from shopping? Would we be able to walk away from comfort, as Raoul did, even temporarily, to help others?
In the quote from Pope Francis above, he speaks about how these kinds of society-instigated preoccupations can weigh us down, keep us from being internally, spiritually free. How often do we second-guess our values and attitudes and choices because they don't conform to how the people around us live? Do we keep quiet about our values because we don't want to be made fun of or be ostracized? Do we have the courage of our convictions? Here the stories of St. Matthew and Raoul Wallenberg can inspire us. Both men ultimately had the inner freedom to walk away from their daily lives into the Unknown. Both chose to say "yes" to the greatest challenge of their lives.
We can say we are only ordinary people. But Raoul Wallenberg passionately believed that one person can make a difference. Jesus the Christ believes and teaches that as well, because as soon as we say "yes" to him, we are allowing him to enter our hearts and change them forever, soften them, expand them, until, like Raoul Wallenberg, we can see that we truly are citizens of the world with responsibility to the world, especially the world's poor and persecuted. Raoul believed that Sweden and America had a responsibility to the Jews who were being persecuted and killed across Europe. We too have a responsibility to speak up for persecuted Jews and every other persecuted group, including refugees, and to recognize that America still has a responsibility to lead and aid the world, not just our own citizens.
What is the Overarching Story of your life? Is it to be For Others? What values do you hold? Who or what is the most important treasure for you? To whom do you say "yes"? Every day, you and I receive competing calls - from society, and from Jesus the Christ. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary walks into our place of business, or wherever we are living, and says "Come, follow me. I will show you where I am and where I need you to be. And, once you say "yes, here I am" to me, you will be flooded with my Grace to accomplish all that I ask from you. Say "yes" to be For Others, and one day you will receive eternal life."