Holy Apostle Matthias

Matthias was a disciple of the Lord from the beginning, present, the Acts say, from the baptism of John until the day the Lord was taken up. The tradition numbers him also among the Seventy whom the Lord sent out two by two to prepare his way (Luke 10:1). He was not, however, among the original Twelve.

Between the Ascension and Pentecost the disciples were gathered in the upper room at Jerusalem, a hundred and twenty in all. Peter stood up and reminded them that the prophecy of the Psalm required the place left empty by Judas to be filled, and that the one chosen must be a witness of the Resurrection. Two were put forward, Joseph called Barsabas and Matthias. They prayed, cast lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, who was numbered with the Eleven.

After Pentecost he preached, the synaxaria relate, in Judaea, in Cappadocia, on the coasts of the Black Sea, and as far as Colchis on the eastern shore. He suffered much for the Gospel, was imprisoned, blinded for a time and restored, and at last condemned for confessing Christ. The accounts of his death differ: some say he was stoned in Jerusalem, some that he was crucified in Colchis, some that he was beheaded after being stoned. The Church keeps his memory on the ninth of August, and his relics rest in part at Trier in Germany, brought there from the East in the early centuries.

He is the last of the Twelve to be added before Pentecost, and the figure in whom the Church first learned that an apostolic office, once given, must be passed on. The order of succession that has held the Church together since rests, in its very pattern, on the choosing of Matthias.