Calling of Matthew

Wycliffe's translation was "sitting in a tollbooth", and the Expanded Bible suggests that the telōnion was "probably a tariff booth for taxing goods in transit".

[5] In all three synoptic gospels, this episode takes place shortly after the miracle of healing the paralytic at Capernaum and is followed by Jesus' image of the danger of putting new wine into old wineskins.

Who can despair of salvation, when he sees public sinners taken out of a custom house, assumed not only to the friendship of God, but raised to the highest dignity of the apostleship."

Listen to the account of S. Matthew’s conversion, which he himself gave to St. Bridget of Sweden, when praying at his tomb at Malphi: “It was my desire at the time I was a publican to defraud no man, and I wished to find out a way by which I might abandon that employment, and cleave to God alone with my whole heart.

And as I clave unto my Lord, His burning words became fixed in my heart, and day and night I fed upon them by meditation, as upon sweetest food.”[9][10] The calling of Matthew has been the subject of works of art by several painters, including: