Holy Apostle Matthias — August 9 / August 22 (Julian Calendar)

On this day, August 9 according to the Julian Calendar (August 22 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Apostle Matthias.

Saint Matthias was of the tribe of Judah and was born in the city of Bethlehem. From his earliest 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 life of piety: he walked always in a manner pleasing to God, fulfilled the divine commandments with exactness, and held strictly to the path which God has marked out for His faithful.

And behold, the day came when the Lord Jesus Christ, having come into the world, revealed Himself to it thirty years after His Nativity and began His public ministry for the salvation of mankind: first He was baptized by John in the River Jordan, then He gathered His disciples and began to preach the drawing near of the Kingdom of Heaven, working countless signs and wonders.

Together with others, Saint Matthias also listened to the teaching of Christ and beheld His miracles, and he too was filled with immeasurable love for the Lord. He forsook all worldly cares and followed the Saviour together with the believing multitude and the other disciples, delighting in the contemplation of the face of God made flesh and in the inexpressible joy of hearing His teaching.

The Lord, to whom even the most hidden movements of the human heart are revealed, chose Matthias from among His disciples; and seeing his fervent zeal and the purity of his soul, He prepared him for apostolic ministry. At first Saint Matthias belonged to the number of the Lord’s seventy holy apostles, who, in distinction 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). But after the Lord’s suffering 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 betrayer, Judas Iscariot. After the casting out of the latter, the company of the Lord’s disciples had lost its fullness, for no one had been chosen in Judas’s stead and the apostles remained eleven. Therefore the chief of the apostles, Saint Peter, addressed the assembly of the first Christians with these words: the prophecy of the Holy Scripture concerning Judas the betrayer had to be fulfilled; and into our company of the Twelve there must without fail be chosen, in Judas’s place, a worthy man who was always at the side of the apostles during the time that the Lord dwelt 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 confirmed miraculously by the Lord Himself through the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, for the Spirit of God, in the form of fiery tongues, rested upon Saint Matthias together with the other apostles and granted him also the divine grace.

After the descent of the Holy Spirit the apostles cast lots to determine where and in what land each should preach the Gospel. To Matthias fell Judea, where he labored thereafter in the preaching of the word of God: he traveled through the cities, towns and villages and everywhere proclaimed the salvation of mankind through Jesus Christ. Yet besides the Jews, Saint Matthias preached the faith of Christ among the pagans as well. According to Church tradition he preached the word of God to the inhabitants of the second Ethiopia and endured many torments from the pagans there (by this is meant the Ethiopia of Pontus, that is, Colchis): they beat him, dragged him along the ground, hung him upon a post and tore his body with sharp irons, burned his flesh with fire and inflicted many other torments upon him. But the holy apostle, strengthened by the Lord, bore these trials with courage and joy. According to another tradition, Saint Matthias also preached the Gospel in Macedonia, where wicked pagan Greeks gave him a poison that destroys the sight, in order to test him: let us see, they said, what power your teaching has and what your preached God can do, let us see how He will help you; for this poison was exceedingly potent, and everyone who drank it was inevitably blinded. But Saint Matthias called upon the name of Christ and remained entirely unharmed. Moreover, by the laying on of his hands and the invocation of the Lord’s name, he miraculously healed the people who had been blinded by that poison — and their number exceeded two hundred and fifty. At this the devil was enraged, for such a destruction of his evil power was unbearable to him; and appearing to the pagans in the form of a youth, he commanded them to kill Matthias, saying that this man was abolishing the worship of the “gods” (that is, of the demons). But when the pagans set out to seize the holy apostle they could by no means accomplish it, and for three days they sought him in vain; then Matthias came of his own will to those who were hunting him and gave himself up. They bound him and cast him into prison, where on the first night evil spirits appeared to him without ceasing in various forms and gnashed their furious teeth at him. But on the second night the Lord Himself appeared in a great light, strengthened him, loosed him from his bonds, opened the prison doors and led him out to safety. And when day came, the holy apostle again stood before the people and preached the faith of Christ with still greater courage. Certain of the hard-hearted pagans, who did not believe his preaching and were terribly angered at the holy apostle for exposing their idols, wished to kill him on the spot; but suddenly the earth opened and swallowed up those who wished him harm.

Afterwards this apostle of Christ returned once more to Judea, the land allotted to him, and converted many of the sons of Israel to the faith of Christ. Day and night he preached to them the word of God and confirmed his good tidings with signs and wonders: by calling upon the name of Christ he restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dying; he raised up the paralyzed, healed the lame, cleansed lepers and cast out evil spirits. Calling Moses a holy man and exhorting the Israelites to fulfill the Law given by God, Saint Matthias at the same time instructed all in the faith of Jesus Christ, of whom Moses himself had told them through 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 mankind, incarnate and made man of the Most Holy Ever-Virgin Mary. And all these prophecies concerning the coming Messiah Saint Matthias explained to the Jews as already 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 cruelly persecuted the first Christians in Jerusalem. It was he who commanded the Jews to cast down from the roof of the Temple of 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 so, 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 down to Jerusalem to the aforesaid high priest. The latter convened the Sanhedrin and set the holy apostle before its judgment, addressing that evil assembly with these cunning words:

“The whole world and this honorable assembly know what reproach has fallen upon our nation, and this has come about not through us, but through the perversity of certain men who went out from among us, and through the insatiable greed of the Roman governors, on account of whom our people has suffered greatly. I do not even wish to mention those who have introduced these new heresies and led so many astray; you know how many of them the Roman soldiers have slain. Thus perished both the deceivers and the deceived, who brought shame upon our tribe: 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 among these heretics the strongest heresiarch of all was Jesus of Nazareth: he called himself the Son of God and God, he astonished many with his magical signs and wonders, he drew the hearts of the Jews to himself, and he preached the abolition of the divine Law. For this he was justly condemned according to our Law, which he blasphemed. What shall we say concerning this? Do we not know that the Law was given by God Himself to Moses? That the patriarchs and the prophet Elijah, who was caught up to paradise in a chariot of fire, fulfilled that Law with exactness? Who has not heard that a dead man laid upon the bones of the prophet Elisha at once came to life? And even now, in our own time, how many wonders have been worked by those who please God — yet not one of them has presumed to do what Jesus presumed to do: to claim for himself the honor of God and to introduce a new law! The prophets inspired by God spoke filled with humility, but he spoke his own inventions with arrogance and came to such folly that he rebuked the high priests and rulers with reproaches and called the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites! Has any of our prophets ever done anything like this? And for his arrogance he met a fitting end, when he received the due reward of his deeds. Oh, would that his memory had perished with him and been blotted out! And would that his teaching had died with him and that no one had revived it! But what is especially grievous is that the temple of God, the holy city and the law of our fathers are still under the bondage of the Romans, and there appears neither one who suffers with us nor one who delivers us from this bondage. We are unjustly dragged before the Roman courts, and we endure it! We are deceived, and we give silent consent! We are plundered and stripped of everything, and we do not even raise our voice! And what is most lamentable of all, the Galileans deliver us into the hands of the Romans when they shamelessly accuse us and our nation of the killing of Jesus, as though he were innocent! It is better that these few Galileans perish than that this holy place and the whole nation be destroyed by the hand of the Romans. Of two evils we must choose the lesser, the more endurable and bearable. Behold, this man who stands before us today is one of the disciples of Jesus, and he fully deserves death! But let him first judge for himself — we will not deny him time for reflection, for we desire not his destruction but his correction — and let him choose one of these two: either to follow and obey the Law which God gave us through Moses, and thus preserve his life, or to continue to be called a Christian and to die for it!”

In answer to these words of the high priest, Matthias lifted up his hands and said:

“Brethren and men of Israel! I do not wish to say much concerning the accusation you have brought against me — for me to be called a Christian is not a crime but a glory! For the Lord Himself says to us through the mouth of His prophet that in those 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 have left your house to be a fullness for My chosen ones, and the Lord shall slay you; but My servants shall be called by a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth’ (Isaiah 65:14–16).”

To this the high priest answered Saint Matthias:

“Is it not a crime to count the holy Law as nothing, to render no honor to God the Creator, and to listen to empty and groundless tales of sorcery?”

“If you will hear me,” Matthias replied, “I will explain to you that the teaching we preach is not a groundless invention nor sorcery, but the very truth, attested and confirmed of old by the divine Law!”

And when the high priest gave him leave, Saint Matthias opened his lips and began to expound the figures and prophecies of the Old Testament concerning Jesus Christ: how God gave to our forefathers and patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the promise that from their seed He would raise up such a man through whom all the tribes of the earth would be blessed, of which holy David, the king and prophet, also speaks in his psalm: “His name shall be blessed for ever and ever; His name shall endure before the sun, and His throne before the moon. In Him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, and all nations shall call Him blessed” (Psalm 71:17); how the bush that was not consumed, which appeared to Moses, prefigured the incarnation of Christ from the Most Holy Virgin (Exodus 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, which is, God is with us” (Isaiah 7:14). Saint Matthias also told the Jews that Moses too had foretold to the Israelites most plainly concerning Christ when he said: “The Lord thy God shall raise up unto thee a prophet from among thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken” (Deuteronomy 18:15); and that the same Moses prefigured the voluntary passion of the Saviour when he set the bronze serpent upon a pole, concerning which the prophet Isaiah also said: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before his shearer, so He openeth not His mouth,” and “His soul was delivered unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bore the sins of many, and was given up for their sins” (Isaiah 53:7, 12); and that the prophet Jonah, who was three days swallowed in the belly of the whale and then came forth from it unharmed, was a figure of the Lord Jesus Christ’s three-day burial in the tomb and His subsequent Resurrection from the dead.

This lengthy exposition from the books of the Old Testament, by which it became evident that they spoke precisely of Jesus Christ, greatly angered the high priest Ananias, so that he could no longer restrain himself and cried out in wrath to Saint Matthias:

“How dare you violate the Law? Do you not know the words of the Holy Scripture: ‘If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he give you a sign of deception, and say, Let us go and follow 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 a prophet only, but the Lord of all the prophets, for He is the true God, the Son of God, as the great wonders He has worked openly declare and testify. Therefore I believe in Him, and I hope that I shall remain unshaken in the confession of His most holy name!”

“If you were given time for reflection and for coming to your senses,” the high priest Ananias asked, “would you repent of your transgression?”

“God forbid that I should depart from the truth!” the holy apostle answered firmly. “For by the grace of God I have already acquired the truth, and I will not give it up for anything! With my whole heart I believe and openly confess that Jesus of Nazareth, whom you have rejected and given over to death, is the Son of God, of one essence with the Father and co-eternal with Him; and I am His servant!”

Then the high priest stopped his ears with his fingers and began to shout, gnashing his teeth:

“He blasphemes! He blasphemes God! Let the Law be heard!”

At once they opened the book of the Law and read aloud, for all to hear, the place where it is written: “The man who curses God shall bear his sin; and he who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him” (Leviticus 24:15–17). Let not your eye spare him, and thus you shall put away evil from the deeds of Israel!

After the reading of these words the high priest Ananias turned to the holy Apostle Matthias and said to him:

“Your own words testify against you! Your blood be upon your own head!”

And he condemned Saint Matthias to be stoned, and he was led away at once to execution. When they came to the place called Beth-ha-Skila, which in Hebrew means “the house of the stoned,” Saint Matthias said to the Jews who were present: “Faithless and hypocritical men! Rightly did the holy prophet David say concerning people such as you: they hunt the soul of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood.”

After these words of the apostle of Christ, two witnesses from among the Jews — as the Law required — laid their hands upon his head and testified that Matthias had blasphemed God, the Law and Moses; and these same men cast the first stones at the holy apostle. Matthias asked his murderers to bury these two first stones together with his body, as witnesses and confirmation of his suffering for Christ. Then the others also began to stone him, and beneath the stones that fell upon him like hail the holy apostle lifted up his hands and thus commended his blessed soul to the Lord. But the lawless Jews added mockery to this torment: after the martyr had already reposed, they cut off Matthias’s head with a sword in order to please the Romans, as the Roman custom required — as though this holy apostle of Christ had been an opponent of Caesar!

Thus did this holy apostle of the Lord, Matthias, bring to an end his earthly life and his good labors in martyrdom (this took place about the year 63). According to certain Greek sources, Saint Matthias was put to death by crucifixion. These two accounts, however, need not contradict one another, for the Jews would sometimes stone those who had been fastened to posts; and Matthias too may have been nailed to a cross and stoned in that manner.

According to the testimony of Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus (fourth century), the Apostle Matthias preached the Gospel in the second Ethiopia (Colchis), reposed there, and to this day lies buried in the fortress of Asari (Gonio) near Batumi. For this reason Saint Matthias the Apostle is depicted on the icon of the Glory of the Church of Georgia together with Saint Andrew the First-Called.