Local author’s book examines St. Matthew’s Gospel

A tale of tragedy and triumph, from the advent of sin throughout the world’s hostility, right up until today. That is what Leroy Huizenga, Ph.D., writes about in his latest book, “Behold the Christ: Proclaiming the Gospel of Matthew.”
 
While much of the world has grown indifferent or even hostile to Scripture, Huizenga shines a light on the supernatural events in the Gospel of Matthew that hold the key to our salvation. “He is Emmanuel, God with us always, who saves His people from their sins by dying for them,” he wrote.
 
North Dakota native and Bismarck resident, Huizenga is Administrative Chair of Arts and Letters and Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Mary and author of “Loosing the Lion: Proclaiming the Gospel of Mark” (2017). He came into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil of 2011 after teaching at Wheaton College (in Wheaton, Ill.) for five years. Becoming Catholic at an Evangelical Protestant liberal arts college took an element of courage and great confidence in the teachings of the Church. It ultimately led him to teach at a Catholic university, bringing his deep love and knowledge of Scripture with him.

The writing is deep, but not difficult; academic, yet engrossing. And, after all, with the proper perspective, salvation and the supernatural is always riveting. Through an explanation of history and examination of the Gospel passages, Huizenga gives us that perspective. “In showing how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament, gave us a way to live, and taught us how to follow the narrow way to the kingdom of heaven, St. Matthew modeled the fourfold way of reading Scripture according to letter and spirit,” he noted.

Through Matthew, Huizenga presents Jesus’ founding of the Catholic Church as a robust, rigorous religion with vibrant rituals, and the sacrificial Eucharist as sustenance on the narrow way to heaven. “Jesus demands much of His Church, but the same Jesus who commands His Church also promises and delivers much—above all, Himself,” he explains.

“Behold the Christ,” Huizenga explains, is an attempt at recovering St. Matthews’s story as he composed it. He believes that when we read it as a story with the convictions of St. Matthew’s Christian worldview, we will find it to be a compelling drama, narrating how Jesus the Christ came to save us by means of faith and the sacraments that the Church He founded delivers to the world.
 
The book is separated into two parts. The first on religious discipline and ritual challenges the errors of our contemporary age. The second reads through St. Matthew’s story from the lectionary to help homilists and lay people get a better sense of it.
 
According to Huizenga, it was written “to present Jesus who teaches the disciplines that make for righteousness and institutes a decisive ritual, the Eucharist, for His Church over which the Apostles rule, with Peter at their head, holding the power of the keys. And, Matthew’s Jesus is no mere rabbi; He is the Christ, the Son of God, even God Himself came to be with his people (Matthew 1:23) and perfect them (Matthew 5:48), accompany them even until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). As such, St. Matthew’s Gospel provides the perfect message for confronting the spirit of our times.”
 
Behold the Christ is available online at the St. Paul Center (stpaulcenter.com) and locally at the Mayo Pharmacy in Bismarck.