St. Matthias

OUR VERY GLORY IS OUR WARNING
By St John Henry Newman on the feast of St Matthias 3
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This is the only Saint’s day which is to be celebrated with mingled feelings
of joy and pain. It records the fall as well as the election of an Apostle. St.
Matthias was chosen in place of the traitor Judas. In the history of the latter we
have the warning recorded in very deed, which our Lord in the text gives us in
word, “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” And
doubtless many were the warnings such as this, addressed by our Lord to the
wretched man who in the end betrayed him.

The reflection which rises in the mind on a consideration of the election
of St. Matthias, is this: how easily God may affect His purposes without us, and
put others in our place, if we are disobedient to Him. It often happens that those
who have long been in His favor grow secure and presuming. They think their
salvation certain, and their service necessary to Him who has graciously
accepted it. Now, this feeling of self-importance is repressed all through the
Scriptures, and especially by the events we commemorate today.

What solemn overpowering thoughts must have crowded on St. Matthias,
when he received the greetings of the eleven Apostles, and took his seat among
them as their brother! His very election was a witness against himself if he did
not fulfill it. And such surely will ours be in our degree. We take the place of
others who have gone before, as Matthias did; we are “baptized for the dead,”
filling up the ranks of soldiers, some of whom, indeed, have fought a good fight,
but many of whom in every age have made void their calling. Many are called,
few are chosen. The monuments of sin and unbelief are set up around us. The
casting away of the Jews was the reconciling of the Gentiles. The fall of one
nation is the conversion of another. The Church loses old branches and gains
new. God works according to His own inscrutable pleasure…

Thus the Christian of every age is but the successor of the lost and of the
dead. How long we of this country shall be put in trust with Gospel, we know
not; but while we have the privilege, assuredly we do but stand in the place of
Christians who have either utterly fallen away, or are so corrupted as scarcely
to let their light shine before others. We are at present witnesses of the Truth;
and our very glory is our warning. By the superstitions, the profanities, the
indifference, the unbelief of the world called “Christian”, we are called upon to
be lowly-minded while we preach aloud, and to tremble while we rejoice. Let us
then, as a Church and as individuals, one and all, look to Him who alone can
keep us from falling. Let us with single heart look up to Christ our Saviour, and
put ourselves into His hands, from whom all our strength and wisdom is
derived.

3 Parochial and Plain Sermons, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987, pp. 300-301, 304-305.