At a last meal, Jesus orders the eleven not to leave Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, around 30 AD — Jesus gave his apostles a last order in Jerusalem: they were not to leave the city, but to wait there for what the Father had promised them. He did not say how many days.

They were Galileans, a long way from home, and the city they were told to stay in was the one where Jesus had been put to death. He had been crucified close to the city a few weeks earlier, and afterwards the disciples had met behind locked doors. There were eleven of them now, not twelve.

Saint Bartholomew came from Cana in Galilee and was one of the first men Jesus called. He was one of the Twelve Jesus gave authority to drive out unclean spirits and cure every kind of sickness, then sent out to the people of Israel. He had seen the risen Jesus, and had been taught by him after the Passion.

For forty days since the Passion, Jesus had been appearing to the apostles and teaching them about the kingdom of God. At the table he told the eleven they had heard him speak of the promise already: “John’s baptism, I told you, was with water, but there is a baptism with the Holy Spirit which you are to receive, not many days from this.”

The apostles put a question of their own to him. “Lord, dost thou mean to restore the dominion to Israel here and now?” they asked. They were not going to be given the date. “It is not for you to know the times and seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority,” Jesus told them. What he told them instead was how large the work ahead of them would be. “Enough for you, that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will receive strength from him; you are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and throughout Judaea, in Samaria, yes, and to the ends of the earth,” he said.

He spoke those last words on the Mount of Olives. While the eleven stood there watching, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. They were still staring upwards when two men in white clothes appeared at their side. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking heavenwards?” the two asked them. “He who has been taken from you into heaven, this same Jesus, will come back in the same fashion, just as you have watched him going into heaven.”

It was a short walk back down into the city. They went into Jerusalem and up to the room where they were staying. Eleven men climbed the stairs. St. Peter, St. John, St. James and St. Andrew were among them. So were St. Philip, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew and St. Matthew. The other three were St. James the son of Alphaeus, St. Simon the Zealot and St. Jude the brother of James.

They spent the days praying. St. Bartholomew prayed with the other ten, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, with the other women, and with the relatives of Jesus.

Some days into the waiting, St. Peter stood up in front of about a hundred and twenty people. Judas was dead, and a place among the Twelve stood empty. St. Peter told them that Scripture had foretold what Judas did: “Brethren, there is a prophecy in scripture that must needs be fulfilled; that which the Holy Spirit made, by the lips of David, about Judas, who shewed the way to the men that arrested Jesus.” Then he gave the condition for filling the place. The man had to have been with them since the days when St. John the Baptist was baptising, and to have stayed with them until the day Jesus was taken from them.

Two men were put forward: St. Joseph called Barsabas, who also went by the name Justus, and St. Matthias. Then everyone in the room prayed together over the choice: “Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, shew us which of these two thou hast chosen to take his place in this work of apostleship, from which Judas has fallen away, and gone to the place which belonged to him.”

They cast lots. The lot fell on St. Matthias, and he took his place with the eleven.