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St. Apostle and Evangelist Matthew The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew belongs to the 12 Apostles and is also called Levi in Scripture (Luke 5:27). He is the brother of St. Apostle James Alpheus and, before his calling to the Apostleship, was a Galilean publican, that is, a tax collector (Luke 5:27. Mark 2:14). The Lord saw him sitting on the stairs, and called: walk after Me, and, having arisen, walk after Him. Leaving everything, he followed the Lord and made a great institution for the Lord in his house, that is, a treat; a great multitude of tax collectors and others close to Matthew in their occupations reclined with Jesus Christ at table. The Lord was then surrounded by His disciples, and then, closest of all, by publicans and sinners: this, perhaps, offended the scribes and Pharisees, and they began to reproach the disciples for the Teacher, saying: Why should publicans and sinners eat and drink your Teacher? The Savior Himself heard this reproach and meekly answered the Pharisees: they do not require the health of a doctor, but those who are sick. Come and learn what to eat: I want mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The Pharisees fell silent, but then the disciples of John the Baptist, who were here, responded and asked the Lord Himself a new question: why do His disciples not fast, while they themselves and the Pharisees fast a lot? The Savior also answered these co-questioners and revealed to them in a parable that now was not the time for His disciples to fast; they are not yet prepared for true fasting: can the sons of the marriage cry, as long as the groom is with them? the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one orders the payment of an unbleached robe; for he will suffer his death from the robe, and it will be a pot of rubbish, and so on. (Matthew 9:10–16). Since then St. Matthew, along with other disciples of the Lord Jesus, remained with Him inseparably; but the Gospel says nothing more about Matthew. After the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Matthew preached the Gospel, like all 12 Apostles (Acts 6:2), to the Jews in Judea. Here, according to the legend of Eusebius, St. Athanasius the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, 8 years after the ascension of the Lord and earlier than the other Evangelists, Matthew wrote the Gospel to the believing Jews of Palestine in their language so that, after his removal, the Gospel could replace their absence, and conveyed his Gospel to James, the Lord's brother in the flesh. The Greek translation of this Gospel, which has the same dignity as the original, was made, according to legend, by one of the Apostles - St. Apostle James or John the Theologian. In the 2nd century, Panten, who went to the eastern peoples preaching the word of God, found the Gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew among the Christians of India; it was known in the 4th century. According to Origen, a writer of the 3rd century, Jerome, Epiphanius - the 4th century, and according to the legend of Sophronius of Jerusalem, who lived in the 7th century, appended to the preface to the Gospel of Matthew, the original was kept in their time and precisely in the library of Caesarea, built in the 3rd century by the martyr Pamphilus. The Gospel of Matthew preaches mainly that Jesus Christ is the Messiah promised by God, foretold in the Old Testament by the prophets and sent from God, from the line of David and Abraham. Outside Palestine Ap. Matthew, according to the legend of Eusebius, Dorotheus, Socrates, Nicephorus and others, traveled to preach the word of God to Syria, Media, Persia, Larft, Asian Ethiopia or India, and here he sealed his great Apostolic works with martyrdom for the word of God. In Ethiopia, strengthened by the grace of the Lord Jesus, Apostle. Matthew appeared with the Gospel to the most wild and bestial tribe of anthropophagi (cannibals). They say that the Lord appeared to him then in the form of a beautiful young man, with a rod in his right hand, and, having given peace to the Apostle, handed him the rod and ordered him to plant it in the ground in front of the doors of the newly built church. The planted rod took root, grew into a huge tree and bore fruits incomparable in beauty and sweetness; and from its root came a source of the purest water, which washed away the uncleanness and ugliness of human faces. These are, without a doubt, symbols of the all-purifying water of Christian baptism, which St. brought to the wild tribe. Apostle and Evangelist. He had comforting successes there in the gospel of Christ; He soon ordained Bishop Plato in the city of Mirmena, and he himself, being in solitude, incessantly prayed for the conversion of the entire tribe to Christ. Having healed those possessed by demons in the family of the prince of the country, Fulvian, the Evangelist first attracted his surprise and respect; then he turned all the power of his anger upon himself when the people began to diligently listen to the saving sermon of the Apostle and turn to the true God from the filth of idolatry. They prepared a terrible execution for the evangelist of Christ: they stretched out his body and nailed his hands and feet to the ground, covered him all over with flammable substances and lit them. The flame burned around those standing, melted the idols placed in front of the martyr, but did not damage the body of the saint. Apostle. The prince, overwhelmed with amazement and horror, wanted to honorably remove the Apostle from the fire, but St. Matthew, having made his last prayer, gave up his soul in the hands of God, about 60 years after Christ. Not long after that, Fulvian himself renounced his power and accepted baptism and the name of Matthew in honor and glory of St. Apostle. After the death of Plato, Fulvian was elected and ordained bishop and became a zealous preacher of the Gospel, trying to complete what the Apostle himself began, and imitating him in his deeds of prayer, patience and zeal for the faith of Christ. Having died, he himself joined the ranks of the saints of God and, together with St. The Evangelist Matthew now stands before the throne of God, praying for us sinners who resort to their intercession and intercession. In the 9th century, Theophan, Metropolitan of Nicaea, wrote a canon for St. Ap. and Ev. Matthew, sung today on this day. Church, glorifying Ev. Matthew, as an evangelist, among other things praises him for the fact that he “lifted up the souls of the sad by writing the hour of judgment.” † Repose of Rev. Sergius Malopinezhsky Blessed Sergius served as priest for 62 years at the Malopinezh parish church in Solvychegodsk district. Feeling the approach of death, he accepted monasticism and schema and rested on November 16, 1585, at the age of 92 of his life. His memory was established to be celebrated in 1655 258. Rukop. Life of Vologda. diocesan Ved. 1864, p. 18.