In this Sunday’s gospel [Mt 4:12-23], Matthew related how Jesus began His public ministry. In doing so, Matthew offered much insight into the task of spreading the Good News. This insight is important to better understand the spread of the Good News of Jesus Christ, and its obstacles, in our own times. First, some background on their times is needed here for us to get the point Matthew was making.

Matthew started by saying that Jesus left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, to the area Isaiah called Galilee of the Gentiles. Why did Jesus go to Capernaum? Because Capernaum was a "crossroads" location. There, people would be more open to new ideas than those in an established community like Nazareth. People’s openness to new ideas is essential to spreading the Good News.

Capernaum was a “crossroads” because it was a strategic import-export site, situated where the Upper Jordan River enters the Sea of Galilee. Everything and everyone that moved along the great trade route, known as the Via Maris, passed through Capernaum; all that crossed the Jordan between the tetrarchy of Galilee and the tetrarchy of Philip to the east passed through Capernaum. Jordan River traffic from the north also passed through Capernaum. There would be at least some open minds and hearts in Capernaum.

An important consideration in traveling in the Roman Empire was that each time one crossed a border between one political unit and another (called "Roman tetrarchies") they had to pay a customs tax, called portoria, on everything they were carrying - other than the clothes they wore. That’s why there was a customs house in Capernaum where Matthew worked [cf. Mk 2:14]. In addition, the fishing docks and fish brokers in Galilee were located in Capernaum. During the period of Roman rule, there was no private fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Everyone had to purchase at auction a Roman license to fish there. And, they had to take their catch into Capernaum, sell it to a broker who would pay them, withhold his fees and taxes, and then sell the fish to vendors.¹

The region of Zebulun and Naphtali, which included Capernaum, was known as Galilee in the time of Jesus and the land north of the Via Maris trade route was largely settled by retired military commanders from Babylon, Greece and Rome. They were all Gentiles. However, the town of Bethsaida, which was largely Jewish, was located on the east side of the Jordan in the tetrarchy of Philip. Those Jewish fishermen who grew up in Bethsaida, like the first disciples, were forced to live in Capernaum to avoid having to pay customs taxes every time they crossed from one tetrarchy to the other. That’s why Jesus found a few Jewish fishermen in an essentially Gentile town.

So, here’s the pattern Matthew was laying out in this Gospel passage: Jesus intentionally began spreading the Good News by going to a region that was predominantly Gentile and there He found a few Jewish fishermen, and later a tax collector. And Jesus proceeded from there. The Good News takes root in the minds and hearts of a few who are open to it, yet are surrounded by a larger world of indifference, and at times hostility. And that pattern persists to this day. We do our best to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with others; some will respond and join in, and others will not. And we do so in a world that is largely indifferent, and sometimes hostile, to Christian values.

We are in a time of declining numbers in our Church, but as Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) put it: the number of those who will embrace the Good News in their lives will ebb and flow, just as it has over the many centuries since Jesus first set foot in Capernaum.² We hold fast to the truth, seek out those with open minds and hearts, do the best we can with them; and that’s all He asks of us.

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¹K. C. Hanson, “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition” in Biblical Theology Bulletin, Vol. 27, 1997, pp. 99-111.

²Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997).

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