"almost timidly"

Excerpt from "The 'Calling of Saint Matthew' by Caravaggio. From One Michelangelo to Another," by Giorgio Alessandrini - via Chiesa (and First Things):

One last observation concerns an unusual feature with respect to classical iconography: the figure of Christ is placed in back, while in front, depicted from behind, is the figure of Peter. If the first of the apostles – who with his hand duplicates in his own way, almost timidly, the gesture of Christ – is intended as a figure symbolic of the Church, the painter is placing before us a clear message: the invitation to follow Christ passes through a Church that combines greatness and misery, bursts of faith and denial.

Obedience on the part of a mature faith often involves the acceptance of the historical limitation that always affects the pilgrim Church and that one must be able to transcend. It is precisely by passing through and suffering many visible contradictions that people of faith are often asked to seek the encounter with Christ, until they find the nobility of his face and the authoritativeness of the gesture with which he calls us to follow him.