I followed a link from David Mills at First Things to a post by Sandro Magister on Giorgio Alessandrini’s analysis of Caravaggio’s “The Calling of St. Matthew.” If you ever have a chance to go to Rome, make certain that amongst the many other artistic treasures and wonders, you visit St. Louis of the French Church where this painting hangs. The Feast of St. Matthew was on September 21, which I passed over on the blog since this is also my wife’s birthday (first things first). The analysis by Alessandrini, however, is relevant not only for the Feast of St. Matthew, but our discussion on this blog of Jesus’ teaching on wealth and possessions.

Here is a snippet of Alessandrini’s reading of the Caravaggio painting: 

“The entrance of Jesus accompanied by Peter provokes different reactions. The two figures on the left are so absorbed in the work of counting that they pay no attention to the appearance, much less to Christ’s invitation to Matthew. On the contrary, the sudden appearance of the light does nothing but focus their attention on the coins they are scrutinizing, in one case with the help of a pair of eyeglasses.”

Click here to read all of Alessandrini’s analysis, which is beneath Magister’s post. An image of the painting is also embedded at the post.

John W. Martens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.