GESIMAS · 24 FEBRUARY
Saint Matthias the Apostle
Apostle & Martyr · The Completion of the Twelve · The Chosen One
Matthias — ma-THY-as · Barsabbas — bar-SAB-as · Colchis — KOL-kis · Ethiopia — ee-thee-OH-pee-a · Acts 1:15–26
O Almighty God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles; Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The election of Matthias (ma-THY-as) is the first act of the post-Resurrection Church recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and its form is deliberate: before Pentecost, before the Spirit descends, before the first sermon is preached or the first miracle performed, the Eleven gather to restore the number of the Twelve. One hundred and twenty disciples assembled in Jerusalem, and Peter stood and spoke of the necessity: the place of Judas must be filled, the number must be complete, for the Twelve are not a historical accident but a theological statement — twelve apostles for twelve tribes, the new Israel constituted around the risen Lord. The criterion for the replacement was precise and demanding: the candidate must be one who had accompanied them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them, beginning from the baptism of John unto the day of the Ascension. Not a new appointment but the recognition of a witness who had been present throughout. Matthias had seen it all — the Galilean ministry, the journey to Jerusalem, the cross, and the Resurrection — and had received no particular distinction, no special calling, no narrative of his own. He had been there, faithfully, in the unnamed crowd of disciples, for the entire span of the Lord’s earthly ministry. And then, by the lot cast in prayer, he was chosen.
The lot — the lot fell upon Matthias — is itself a theological statement. The Church did not elect him by popular vote, did not appoint him by episcopal authority, did not select him by his own gifts or prominence. They prayed and cast lots, committing the decision entirely to God. The lot was an ancient Israelite practice for discerning the divine will, used in the division of the promised land among the tribes and in the selection of the goat of Azazel on the Day of Atonement. Its use here, on the threshold of Pentecost, is the last act of the Old Testament dispensation — after the Spirit comes, the Church will discern its leadership differently. But this last casting of the lot is a moment of pure theological surrender: the Church says that it does not know who should complete the Twelve, and it gives the decision to God, and God chooses. Matthias is the apostle of divine election in its most literal form. He did not seek the office. The office found him, by the will of God expressed through what looks like chance but is the hidden decision of the one who governs all things.
Of his subsequent ministry, the New Testament is entirely silent. He is numbered with the Eleven at Pentecost in Acts 2, and then he disappears from the scriptural record entirely. The tradition has him preaching in Judaea, and then variously in Ethiopia or in Colchis (KOL-kis) on the eastern shore of the Black Sea — the land that is now Georgia. The Ethiopian church has a strong tradition of his martyrdom there, by axe. The Georgian church has a tradition of his preaching along the Colchian coast. Neither can be verified. Both may be true. Both may be later accretions to a life of which history kept no account. What is certain is that he received the same commission as all the others — Go ye therefore into all nations — and that he obeyed it, and that what he accomplished in that obedience is known fully only to God. His feast falls in Gesimas, the season of pre-Lenten preparation, which is entirely right for the man who waited in obscurity through the whole of the Lord’s ministry and was finally called to serve in the long, unwitnessed labour that followed.
Matthias is the patron of all hidden ministry — of all who labour faithfully without record or recognition, who are present throughout and named nowhere, who are chosen not by their own initiative but by God’s, and who go out into the world to do what they were told without anyone noting where they went or what they found. The tradition of the ancient Church regarded the completeness of the Twelve as essential: the apostolic witness must be whole, the foundation must be fully laid, the college that sat with the risen Lord on the mountain in Galilee must be intact when the Spirit descends at Pentecost. Matthias made it whole. He is the completion, the restoration of the number, the man whose hidden faithfulness during the entire ministry qualified him for the place that treason had vacated. He now stands in the cloud of witnesses — anonymous in the earthly record, fully known in heaven — as the testimony that God’s purposes are not frustrated by human failure, that the Twelve will always be twelve, and that the ones who kept faith through the years of obscurity are the ones God calls when the time comes.
O Almighty God, who by thy sovereign will didst choose thy servant Matthias to complete the number of thine Apostles and to bear witness to the Resurrection in the nations of the earth; Grant that we, like him, may be faithful in the hidden years before the calling comes, and obedient in the unknown labour that follows; knowing that thou dost number among thy witnesses those whose names the world has not recorded; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.