Holy Apostle Matthias

Life

By birth from Bethlehem, of the tribe of Judah. He studied under Saint Simeon the God-Receiver in Jerusalem. When the Lord went forth to preach the Kingdom of God, Matthias also joined those who loved the Lord, for he himself loved Him with all his heart, listened to His words with delight, and beheld His works. In the beginning Matthias was numbered among the Seventy lesser disciples of Christ, but after the Resurrection of the Lord, when the place of the traitor Judas was vacated, the apostles chose this Matthias by lot to fill the place of Judas as one of the Twelve great apostles (Acts 1:23). Having received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Matthias set out to preach the Gospel and preached first in Judea, then in Ethiopia, where he endured great sufferings for the sake of Christ. It is held that he also preached throughout Macedonia, where they wished to blind him, but he became invisible to his torturers and thus escaped the danger. While in prison, the Lord appeared to him, strengthened him, and freed him. Finally he returned again to his work in Judea. There he was accused and brought to trial before the high priest Ananus, before whom he fearlessly witnessed to Christ. Ananus, that same Ananus who had previously slain the Apostle James, condemned Matthias also to death. Then they led out Saint Matthias and killed him by stoning, and afterward cut off his head with an axe — this was the Roman manner of executing the condemned, and the hypocritical Jews applied this method to the dead man to show the Romans that the slain one had also been an enemy of Rome. Thus this great apostle of Christ ended his life and entered into the eternal joy of his Lord.

From the Hymn of Praise

The Apostle Matthias spoke of ChristAnd publicly witnessed before the Jews:"He is that Messiah of whom the Scriptures write,He is the Son of God who descended from on high.