“…until all of us come…to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (NRSV, Ephesians 4:13).

Before Our Lord called his disciples, they had only one thing in common – they were steady and industrious men.

At one extreme there was Simon the Zealot – a member of the fanatical Jewish resistance against the Romans; and at the other Matthew the tax collector who collaborated with King Herod Antipas, the vassal of the Roman Emperor.

And not only did they differ in politics, they also differed in character; and yet for all that, each of them saw, existing in Christ, his own good qualities perfectly expressed, and not only those qualities but also the other virtues which each admired but had yet to acquire for himself.