Reflection on The Calling of St. Matthew

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.

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Welcome!

My name is Miguel Escobar and I am an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Long Island, currently serving a two-year curacy at San Andrés Episcopal Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. My work centers on the intersection of faith, justice, and economics, including through research and presentations on Christianity’s complicated relationship with money, wealth, and poverty. I write and think about these issues from my location in a parish setting, and more specifically as someone committed to Spanish-language, Latino ministry. As a writer, I focus on how Christianity has wrestled with questions of money from its earliest days to the present. My first book, The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today , traces how the early Church’s stance on wealth shifted over the first five centuries, going from a position of sharp critique to eventual accommodation, and reflects on what was gained and lost in that transition. I’m currently working on a second book that explores the...

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Miguel Castilleja Escobar

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