Published: May 14, 2026
There is a line in today's Gospel that has the power to stop us completely, if we let it land the way it was meant to. Jesus, speaking to His disciples in the intimacy of the upper room, says simply: "It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you." In a world that constantly tells us to build our own brand, earn our own place, and prove our own worth, this sentence arrives like a breath of clean air. We did not find God. God found us. We did not select ourselves for this life of faith. We were chosen.
The Church today celebrates the Feast of Saint Matthias, the apostle chosen to take the place of Judas among the Twelve. His story, told in the first reading from Acts, is remarkable not for what Matthias himself did, but for how quietly and completely he submitted to being chosen. He did not campaign for the role. He did not make a speech. The community prayed, cast lots, and the lot fell to him. In an instant, an ordinary disciple — faithful, hidden, unknown to history until this very moment — became the twelfth pillar of the apostolic foundation of the Church. The initiative belonged entirely to God.
This is the deep logic of the Gospel reading that the Church has placed on Saint Matthias's feast day. Jesus does not say "I chose you because you were the most talented" or "because you were the most devout." He simply says: I chose you. The choice is rooted entirely in His love, not in our merit. And what is that love? "As the Father loves me, so I also love you." The love with which Jesus loves His disciples is the same love the Father has for the Son — eternal, unconditional, total. We are drawn into a love that is not of this world.
To "remain" in that love is the great work of the Christian life. Jesus uses this word — remain, abide, dwell — with striking frequency in the Gospel of John. It is not a passive word. To remain in the love of Christ is to orient oneself entirely toward Him, to return to Him again and again, to refuse to let the noise and distraction of life pull us away from the deep center where His love lives. And the path to remaining, Jesus tells us, is keeping His commandments. Not as a transaction — as if our obedience earns His love — but as the natural expression of a heart that has received that love and does not want to wander from it.
The commandment He gives is one: love one another as I have loved you. This is not a general encouragement toward niceness. It is a precise and demanding call to the same kind of love Jesus has shown — self-giving, sacrificial, patient, and real. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." Jesus said this on the night before He did exactly that. The commandment and the example are inseparable. We are not asked to love from our own reserves. We are asked to love the way He loves, which means we must first allow ourselves to be loved by Him.
This is where the theology becomes very personal. Many of us find it easier to give love than to receive it. We are comfortable helping, serving, and giving, but we resist being on the receiving end — of God's grace, of others' care, of the simple truth that we are chosen and beloved not because of what we do but because of who He is. Saint Matthias had to receive his apostleship as a gift. He could not have manufactured it. He could not have campaigned his way into it. It was given, and he received it. That receptivity is the first act of discipleship.
What follows from being chosen is mission. "I appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain." Jesus does not choose us simply for our own sanctification, as if our relationship with Him were a private matter between soul and God alone. He chooses us for the world. We are sent. The fruit He speaks of is not fleeting — it is lasting. This gives weight and dignity to every act of love, every work of mercy, every word spoken in truth. When we act in His name and in His love, what we do does not disappear. It bears fruit that endures.
There is also in this passage an extraordinary gift of language. Jesus says, "I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father." Friends. Not servants, not subordinates, not subjects. Friends. In the ancient world, friendship implied a radical equality of sharing — the sharing of goods, of secrets, of life. Jesus says He has shared with us everything He has received from the Father. The full mystery of God's love has been disclosed to us in the person of Christ. We are not kept at arm's length from the divine life. We are invited into it.
Saint Matthias serves as a quiet but powerful reminder that God's ways of choosing are not our ways. He chose twelve ordinary men to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. When one fell away, He chose another — hidden, faithful, ordinary Matthias — and made him a foundation stone. He continues to choose, today, people who do not feel particularly chosen: people who doubt their worthiness, people whose faith feels fragile, people who wonder whether God really sees them or cares.
The answer of this feast, and of this Gospel, is an unhesitating yes. He sees. He cares. He chose you before you chose Him. He loves you with the same love with which the Father loves the Son. And He is asking you, now, to remain in that love — and to pass it on.
That is the whole of the Christian life. Remain in His love. Love one another. Bear fruit that lasts. It is simple enough to say in a single sentence, and it is the work of a lifetime.
Gospel Reading: John 15:9-17 | Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle | May 14, 2026