There were two candidates: a pious, just man named Joseph Barsaba, and Matthias. Jesus's followers gather together, prayed, and then drew lots to choose the new apostle. The lot fell on Matthias.
This is all we learn of the saint from the New Testament. For some time a Gospel, said to be by Matthias, circulated in the early Christian world, but this has now been lost, apart from a few sentences quoted in other writers. What we know for certain, as St. Peter put it when Matthias was chosen as an apostle, is that he was 'one of the men who accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us.' Matthias, says Peter, was 'a witness to Christ's resurrection.'
From A Calendar of Saints,
The Lives of the Principal Saints of the Christian Year
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