In this reflection for Church Anew, I look closely at The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio. The painting depicts the moment when Jesus calls Matthew away from a table covered in coins -- that is, a moment when one way of life is interrupted and another begins. That scene opens a larger question: what does it mean to follow Jesus in a world shaped by money and empire? What does it meant to divest from empire? The essay explores how the Gospel of Matthew invites Christians to rethink our relationship to wealth, power, and the systems we inhabit.
Preached at San Andrés, Sunset Park, Brooklyn on February 22, 2026. Spanish follows below. From 2023 to 2024 I lived in Barcelona, Spain. And basically from the first day I noticed that in the city there is a mountain visible from almost anywhere: Tibidabo. On its summit stands an imposing church, the Temple of the Sacred Heart. I remember riding my bicycle around the city and feeling that there was something dark about that mountain, as if it loomed over Barcelona, threatening it. In fact, I’m not the only person who has had that impression. One day I went up the mountain, and there I learned more about the history of the place. The name Tibidabo comes from the Latin tibi dabo, which means “I will give you,” referring to the words of the devil to Jesus in the Gospel: “All this I will give you…” From that height you can see the whole city, the nearby towns, and all the way to the horizon, the turquoise blue of the Mediterranean Sea. The people of Barcelona—with vivid imagination—d...