Way back in December I remarked that the fact that I observe St Thomas’ day in December marked me out as a little odd. A dear friend of mine pointed out that this may have been underselling my oddness. Fair enough. But today, it once more takes the form of observing a saint’s day on the old date.

In the Roman Catholic Church, St Matthias’ Day was moved to May in the late 60’s so that it didn’t fall in Lent so often. It is, after all, quite difficult to be both festive and penitential at the same time. I can understand that.

And yet there is plenty about St Matthias’ day that lends itself to repentance. The prescribed readings for morning and evening prayer today are spine chilling! In the morning, we read of the Lord’s savage judgement against the household of the priest Eli, who weakly protested against, but failed to actually do anything about the behaviour of his sons, who were abusing their position as priests to steal the meat of the people’s sacrificial offerings and sleep with the women who ministered at the tent of meeting.

Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me for ever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honour me I will honour, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. Then in distress you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house for ever. The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day. And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed for ever. And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and shall say, “Please put me in one of the priests’ places, that I may eat a morsel of bread.”’”

1 Sam 2:30-36

In the evening we get Shebna the Steward of the Royal household. He appears to have been building an expensive tomb for himself as a sign of his own importance. Again, God’s judgement is terrifying.

Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you and whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land. There you shall die, and there shall be your glorious chariots, you shame of your master’s house. I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station. In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand. 

Isaiah 22:17-19

These are not exactly festive readings! The common thread, and the link to Matthias (whose own story is told in the first reading for Holy Communion) is clear: A heavy judgement awaits those who abuse their office in God’s kingdom and, at least in these instances, the offender is replaced with someone more faithful.

Cranmer’s collect* prays that those who hold office in the Church today will be more ‘Matthias’ than ‘Judas’.

O Almighty God,

who into the place of the traitor Judas

chose your faithful servant Matthias

to be of the number of the twelve Apostles:

Grant that your Church,

being always preserved from false Apostles,

may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

BCP collect for St Matthias’ Day (Language modernised)

I suspect that for Cranmer, the allusion to false Apostles may have been a rather pointed way of alluding to the Church of England’s rejection of Bishop of Rome’s claim to be the successor to St Peter. Certainly in Cranmer’s day, there was a desperate need for the Lord to raise up ‘faithful and true pastors’ for a church in dire need of reform.

Today, I have not found it difficult to lament amidst the festivity. Along with many others in the Reformed and Evangelical traditions in the Church, I have real concerns that the Church of England is at risk of formally departing from the Apostolic faith.** The need for Biblical order and guidance from faithful and true pastors is as great as it has ever been. Lord, have mercy!

But it is easy to point the finger. Conservative Evangelicals are themselves still in a process of coming to terms with fundamental problems in our own constituency’s approach to leadership, which has been prompted by appalling instances of abuse in our own churches. We ourselves still have much to repent of and must not use the urgency of the situation in the wider church as a reason to delay or curtail that process of repentance. Christ, have mercy!

To be honest, it weighs heavily on me today that I aspire to be one of those ‘faithful and true pastors’ for the Church going forward. Please do pray for clergy, ordinands and those in discernment today. Lord, have mercy!

But there is a festive side to today. Amidst the solemn readings about judgement, there is always the assurance that God does indeed raise up faithful servants for the good of his people, such as the Apostle Matthias. The Good Shepherd does not abandon his sheep and will continue to pastor them come what may. And so this St Matthias day in Lent has been both penitential and festive.

*I’m not actually certain Cranmer wrote this one. I haven’t traced it back further than 1549, and the one modern Roman Catholics use is much more like the one that was in the Medieval Sarum Rite. The BCP collect is quite like one that many modern Lutheran denominations use, however, so it might be Lutheran in origins.

**With reference to the recent synod vote on the outcome of the Living in Love and Faith process, I commend this statement from the Church of England Evangelical Council to anyone who has not read it yet.