After the Ascension of Jesus, St. Peter proposed to the assembled faithful that they choose a disciple of Christ to fill the place of the traitor Judas in the first missionary band. Lots were drawn, with the result in favour of Matthias. According to one ancient tradition, this missioner laboured in Ethiopia and was martyred there. Thus did St. Matthias receive "the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him."

      An apostle of Jesus Christ, St. Mathias, is one of the blessed choir which the Church would have us honour during the season of Septuagesima. Mathias was one of the first to follow our Saviour; and he was an eye-witness of all His divine actions up to the very day of the Ascension. He was one of the seventy-two disciples; but our Lord had not conferred upon him the dignity of an apostle. And yet, he was to have this great glory, for it was of him that David spoke, when he prophesied that another should take the bishopric left vacant by the apostasy of Judas the traitor.

      In the interval between Jesus' Ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, the apostolic college had to complete the mystic number fixed by our Lord Himself, so that there might be the twelve on that solemn day, when the Church, filled with the Holy Ghost, was to manifest herself to the Synagogue. The lot fell on Mathias; he shared with his brother-apostles the persecution in Jerusalem, and, when the time came for the ambassadors of Christ to separate, he set out for the countries allotted to him. Tradition tells us that these were Cappadocia and the provinces bordering on the Caspian Sea.

      He was stoned to death at Colchis in 80 AD. Some of his relics are in the abatical church of Triers, others in Saint Mary Major in Rome.