Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle

Lectionary: 564

Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.

Saint Matthias' feast falls every year in mid May, apparently because Pentecost usually occurs in May; and his election anticipated that day when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles like tongues of fire. 

Returning from the hill where Jesus had ascended into heaven, the Eleven knew only that they must restore the Twelve. Jesus had selected twelve disciples and called them apostles, apparently to indicate that his Church should be a "New Tribes of Israel." The ancient tribes were named after the twelve sons of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham. Despite their humiliation and poverty as slaves in Egypt, the Hebrews had retained that heritage for four hundred years; and, even during Jesus's lifetime fifteen centuries later, some families remembered their ancestral identity. 

Relying upon a traditional method of discovering God's will, Peter and the disciples cast lots and the lot fell to Matthias. (The above picture describes him holding a lot in his hand.) This was even before the Holy Spirit had come upon them at Pentecost. 

But the institution of twelve did not remain with the Church very long. When the Apostle James was beheaded, the Apostles fled the City and did not replace him when the Church reconvened some time later. They had other concerns in 49 AD as they met to discuss the influx of gentiles. Nor does Saint Matthias reappear in the New Testament. 

With no intention of disparaging one of Jesus's earliest and most faithful disciples, Matthias's real importance in Acts 1 is with the words twelve and apostles. Peter and the others agreed that they must maintain the Lord's twelve, because that word invokes the entire history of Israel from Abraham to Jesus. And, as Jesus is the Apostle of Truth, so the Church must be built on the fidelity and integrity of Apostles. 

If these men had misunderstood, misconstrued, or distorted the Lord's purpose and mission, our salvation would have been lost. Almost a century later, Saint John of Patmos attested to his faith in the Apostles when he described a New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. 

It had a massive, high wall, with twelve gates where twelve angels were stationed and on which names were inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites.... The wall of the city had twelve courses of stones as its foundation, on which were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

By his time, the Twelve and all the eyewitnesses of the Risen Lord had died, but the Church remained firmly built upon their teachings, as the martyrs were proving with their lives. Whenever we celebrate any apostle's feastday, we thank God for their fidelity. Although they were simple men -- fishers, tax collectors, etc. -- they knew the Truth and would not alter it for anyone.