The Holy Apostle Matthias († c. 63)
The holy Apostle Matthias came of the tribe of Judah and was born in the town of Bethlehem. From early childhood he began to study the Holy Scriptures and the divine law in Jerusalem under the guidance of Saint Symeon the God-receiver. From him Matthias learned a godly life: he always lived in a way pleasing to God and kept the divine commandments to the letter, holding strictly to the path that God has marked out for His righteous faithful…
And then the day came when the Lord Jesus Christ, who had come into the world, thirty years after His birth revealed Himself to the world and began His public ministry for the salvation of men: first He was baptised by John in the river Jordan, then He gathered disciples and began to preach that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, working countless wonders and signs as He did so.
Together with others, Saint Matthias too listened to Christ’s teaching and saw His wonders; he too was filled with boundless love for the Lord: he left his worldly cares and, together with the believing people and the other disciples, followed the Saviour, delighting in beholding the face of God made flesh and in the unspeakable joy of hearing His teaching.
The Lord, to whom even the most hidden movements of the human heart are open, chose Matthias among His disciples and, seeing his burning zeal and purity of soul, prepared him for apostolic service. At first Saint Matthias belonged to the number of the Lord’s seventy holy apostles, who, to distinguish them from the Twelve, are called the lesser apostles. Of them the Gospel says: “After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come” (Luke 10:1). And after the Lord’s Passion on the cross, His resurrection from the dead and His ascension into heaven, Saint Matthias was numbered among the twelve apostles in place of the Lord’s betrayer, Judas Iscariot. After the latter had been cast out of the Twelve, this company of the Lord’s disciples had lost its fullness, for no one had been chosen in place of Judas, and the apostles were left eleven. That is why the head of the apostles, Saint Peter, addressed the gathering of the first Christians with this word: the prophecy of divine Scripture concerning Judas, the betrayer of the Lord, had to be fulfilled; but into our company of the twelve apostles one worthy man must without fail be chosen in place of Judas, one of those who were always with the apostles when the Lord was among us. “And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:23–26), as the twelfth apostle. This choice was soon miraculously confirmed by the Lord Himself through the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the fiftieth day after Pascha; for the Spirit of God, in the form of fiery tongues, rested upon Saint Matthias together with the other apostles and granted him too the divine grace.
After the descent of the Holy Spirit the apostles cast lots to decide who should preach the Gospel where, in which country. Judea fell to Matthias, and there he afterwards laboured in preaching the word of God: he went about the towns and villages and everywhere proclaimed the salvation of mankind by Jesus Christ. Yet besides the Jews, Saint Matthias preached faith in Christ among the Gentiles as well. According to Church tradition, he preached the word of God to the inhabitants of the second Ethiopia and endured many torments at the hands of the pagans there (by this is meant the Pontic Ethiopia, that is, Colchis): they beat him, dragged him along the ground, hung him on a post, tore his body with sharp irons, burned his flesh with fire, and inflicted many other torments on him. But the holy apostle, strengthened by the Lord, bore these trials bravely and with joy. According to another tradition, Saint Matthias also preached the Gospel in Macedonia, where the wicked pagan Greeks, to test him, made him drink a poison that took away the sight: let us see what power your teaching has, and the God you preach, let us see how He will help you; for this poison was very potent, and everyone who drank it was blinded without fail. But Saint Matthias called on the name of Christ and remained entirely unharmed. More than that, by the laying on of hands and the invocation of the Lord’s name he miraculously healed those who had been blinded by this poison — and there were more than two hundred and fifty of them. At this the devil was enraged, for he could not bear such an overthrow of his evil power; he appeared to the pagans in the form of a boy and ordered them to kill Matthias: this man is destroying the worship of the “gods” (that is, of demons). But when the pagans set out to seize the holy apostle, they could not manage it at all, and for three days they searched for him in vain; and then Matthias of his own will went to the pagans who were hunting him and gave himself up. They bound him and threw him into prison, where on the first night evil spirits appeared to him without ceasing in various forms and gnashed their teeth at him in fury. But on the second night the Lord Himself appeared in the greatest light, encouraged him, freed him from his bonds, opened the door of the prison and led him out to safety. And when day came, the holy apostle again stood before the people and preached faith in Christ with even greater boldness. Some hard-hearted pagans, who did not believe his preaching and were terribly angry with the holy apostle for denouncing their idols, wanted to kill him on the spot; but suddenly the earth opened and swallowed up those who meant him harm.
Afterwards this apostle of Christ returned again to Judea, the land that had fallen to him by lot, and turned many of the sons of Israel to faith in Christ; day and night he preached the word of God to them and confirmed his message with signs and wonders: by calling on the name of Christ he gave sight back to the blind, hearing to the deaf, life to the dying; he raised up the paralysed, healed the lame, cleansed lepers and cast out evil spirits. While calling Moses a holy man and urging the Israelites to keep the law given by God, Saint Matthias at the same time instructed everyone in faith in Jesus Christ, of whom Moses himself had told them by showing signs and figures, and whom the prophets of the Old Testament had foretold; for Jesus Christ is the Son of God, sent into the world by God the Father for the salvation of men, who took flesh and became man of the All-holy Ever-Virgin Mary. At the same time Saint Matthias explained to the Jews that all these prophecies of the Messiah to come had already been fulfilled, for this promised Messiah — the Anointed Saviour — is our Lord Jesus Christ.
At that time the high priest of the Jews was Ananias, a hater of Christ and a blasphemer of His name; he fiercely persecuted the first Christians in Jerusalem; it was he who ordered the Jews to throw down from the roof of the temple in Jerusalem the holy Apostle James, the brother of the Lord according to the flesh, who was the first bishop of the Christians in Jerusalem. And when Saint Matthias was preaching Christ, the Son of God, in the synagogues of Galilee, the Jews, blinded by unbelief and malice, seized him and brought him to Jerusalem to the high priest just mentioned. The high priest convened the Sanhedrin, brought the holy apostle before its court, and addressed that evil assembly with these crafty words:
“The whole world and this honourable assembly know what disgrace has fallen upon our nation — and this has come about not through our fault, but through the apostasy of some who came out from among us, and also through the insatiable greed of the Roman governors, because of whom our nation has suffered greatly. I do not even wish to mention these introducers of new heresies, who have led so many people astray; you know how many of them the Roman soldiers have killed; so perished both the deceivers and the deceived, who put our race to shame: such introducers of heresies were Judas the Galilean and Theudas the sorcerer. With their destruction even the memory of them was wholly rooted out. But the mightiest heresiarch among these heretics was Jesus of Nazareth: He called Himself the Son of God and God, amazed many with His sorcerous signs and wonders, drew the hearts of the Jews to Himself and preached the abolition of the divine law. For this He was justly condemned according to our law, which He blasphemed. What are we to say to this? Do we not know that God Himself gave the law to Moses? That the law was kept to the letter by the patriarchs and by the prophet Elijah, who was caught up to paradise in a chariot of fire? Who has not heard that a dead man laid upon the bones of the prophet Elisha came to life at once? And even now, in our own day, how many wonders have been worked by those who please God — yet not one of them has dared to do what Jesus dared: to claim divine honour for Himself and to bring in a new law! The prophets inspired by God spoke full of humility, but He (Jesus) spoke His own inventions with arrogance, and went so far in folly as to reproach the high priests and rulers, and to call the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites! Did any of our prophets ever do such a thing?! And for His arrogance He met a fitting end, when He received the just reward for His deeds. Oh, if only His memory had perished and vanished with Him! And if only His teaching had died with Him, and no one had brought it to life again! What is especially grievous is that the temple of God, the holy city and the law of our fathers are still in bondage to the Romans, and there is no one to be seen who has pity on us or who will deliver us from this bondage. We are unjustly dragged before the Roman courts, and we endure it! We are deceived, and we silently consent! We are robbed and stripped of everything, and we do not even raise our voices! And what is most lamentable of all, the Galileans hand us over to the Romans when they shamelessly accuse us and our nation of killing Jesus, as though He were innocent!.. Better that these few Galileans should perish than that this holy place and the whole nation should be wiped out by the hand of the Romans. Of two evils we should choose the lesser — the one more bearable and easier to endure. And this man too, who stands before us today, is one of Jesus’ disciples and fully deserves death! But let him first judge for himself — we will not deny him time to reflect, for we desire not his destruction but his correction — and choose one of these two: either follow the law that God gave us through Moses and submit to it, and so keep his life, or go on being called a Christian and die for it!..”
In answer to these words of the high priest, Matthias raised his hands and said:
“Men and brethren of Israel! I do not wish to say much about the charge you have brought against me: for me to be called a Christian is not a crime but a glory! For the Lord Himself tells us by the mouth of His prophet that in the last days ‘behold, my servants shall rejoice with gladness, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit; for ye shall leave your house to be the fill of my chosen, and the Lord shall slay you; but my servants shall be called by a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth’ (Isa. 65:14–16).”
To this the high priest replied to Saint Matthias:
“Is it not a crime to set the holy law at naught, to give no honour to God the Creator, and to listen to empty, groundless tales of sorcery?!”
“If you will hear me,” Matthias answered, “I will explain to you that the teaching we preach is not a groundless invention or sorcery, but the truth itself, testified and confirmed from of old by the divine law!”
And when the high priest allowed this, Saint Matthias opened his mouth and began to explain the figures and prophecies of the Old Testament concerning Jesus Christ: how God gave our forefathers and patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the promise to raise up from their seed a man in whom all the tribes of the earth would be blessed, of which holy David too, king and prophet, speaks in his psalm: “Let his name be blessed for ever; before the sun his name endureth, and before the moon his throne! In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed; all nations shall call him blessed” (Ps. 71:17); how the bush that burned and was not consumed, which appeared to Moses, prefigured the incarnation of Christ from the All-holy Virgin (Exod. 3:2); how Isaiah prophesied the birth of Jesus from a virgin: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, that is, God is with us” (Isa. 7:14). Saint Matthias told the Jews too that Moses had foretold Christ to the Israelites quite plainly when he said: “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken” (Deut. 18:15); that he also foreshadowed the Saviour’s voluntary Passion when he had the brazen serpent hung upon a pole, of which the prophet Isaiah too has said: “…He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth,” and “…his soul was delivered to death: and he was numbered among the transgressors; and he bore the sins of many, and was delivered because of their iniquities” (Isa. 53:7, 12); and that the prophet Jonah too, who was three days swallowed up in the belly of the whale and afterwards came out of it unharmed, was a figure of the Lord Jesus Christ’s three days in the tomb and His resurrection from the dead that followed.
This long explanation of the books of the Old Testament, which made it plain that they spoke precisely of Jesus Christ, greatly enraged the high priest Ananias, so much so that he could not restrain himself and cried out in anger to Saint Matthias:
“How dare you lay hands on the law?! Do you not know the words of divine Scripture: ‘If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign to lead thee astray, saying, Let us go after other gods, which ye have not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet…, for the Lord your God proveth you… and that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death!’?!”
Saint Matthias answered:
“He of whom I speak is not only a prophet, but the Lord of all the prophets, for He is the true God, the Son of God, as the great wonders He worked plainly declare and bear witness. That is why I believe in Him, and I hope to remain unshaken in confessing His all-holy name!”
“If we give you time to think and to come to your senses,” asked the high priest Ananias, “will you repent of your sin?”
“God forbid that I should turn away from the truth!” the holy apostle answered firmly. “For by the grace of God I have already gained the truth, and I will not give it up for anything! I believe with my whole heart and openly confess that Jesus of Nazareth, whom you rejected and gave over to death, is the Son of God, one in essence and co-eternal with the Father, and I am His servant!..”
Then the high priest stopped his ears with his fingers and, gnashing his teeth, began to shout:
“He blasphemes! He blasphemes God! Let him hear the law!”
At once they opened the book of the law and read aloud, in the hearing of all, the place where it is said:
“Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin. And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him” (Lev. 24:15–17)! Let not your eye spare him, and so you shall put away evil from the deeds of Israel!
When these words had been read, the high priest Ananias turned to the holy Apostle Matthias and said to him:
“Your own words bear witness against you! Your blood be upon your own head!”
The place at Gonio (near Batumi) where, according to some traditions, the holy Apostle Matthias is buried
And he sentenced Saint Matthias to be stoned, and he was led away at once to execution. When they came to the place called Bethlaskila, which in Hebrew means “the house of the stoned”, Saint Matthias said to the Jews who were there:
“Faithless hypocrites! Rightly did the holy prophet David say of men like you: they will hunt for the soul of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood.”
After these words of Christ’s apostle, two witnesses from among the Jews, as the law required, laid their hands on his head and testified that Matthias had blasphemed God, the law and Moses; they too threw the first stones at the holy apostle; and Matthias asked his murderers to bury these first two stones together with his body, as witnesses and proof of his suffering for Christ. Then the others too began to stone him, and under the hail of stones the holy apostle lifted up his hands and so gave up his blessed soul to the Lord. The lawless Jews added mockery to this torment: when the martyr was already dead, to please the Romans they cut off Matthias’s head with a sword, as Roman custom required — as though this holy apostle of Christ had been an enemy of Caesar!..
So this holy apostle of the Lord, Matthias, ended his earthly life and his good labours by martyrdom (this happened around the year 63). According to some Greek sources, however, Saint Matthias died by crucifixion. But these two accounts need not contradict each other, for the Jews used to stone those who had been bound to posts, and Matthias too may have been fastened to a cross and stoned in this way.
According to Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus (4th c.), the Apostle Matthias preached the Gospel in the second Ethiopia (Colchis), died there, and is buried to this day near Batumi, in the fortress of Asar (Gonio). That is why the holy Apostle Matthias is depicted with Saint Andrew the First-called on the icon of the glory of the Georgian Church.
