From the Church father Tertullian: After one of the apostles was cut off, Christ commanded the eleven others to “go and teach all nations and baptize them into the Father, and into the Son, and into the Holy Spirit.” The apostles (which means “sent ones”) immediately started doing this. Having chosen Matthias as the twelfth apostle in the place of Judas, on the basis of the authoritative prophecy found in a psalm of David, they received the promised power of the Holy Spirit for the gift of miracles and preaching. They established churches throughout Judea, by bearing witness to the faith in Jesus Christ. Then they went out into the world and preached the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations, establishing churches in every city, from which all the other churches, one after another, received the tradition of faith and doctrine. Every day there are more churches being established. This is precisely why only these churches are able to call themselves apostolic, because they are the offspring of apostolic churches. . . . Therefore, though there are so many churches, they all comprise the one original church founded by the apostles. In this way, they are all originally apostolic and one, in unity, peaceful communion, and are brothers in the bond of hospitality, privileges which derive from no other rule than the one tradition from the same mystery.

From this we draw up our rule of faith . . . all doctrine that agrees with the apostolic churches, which are the molds and original sources, must be regarded as the truth that contains what was received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God. All doctrine must immediately be regarded as false that has the taste of being different from that which the churches received from the apostles, from Christ, from God.

A brief biography: St. Matthias, one of the lesser-known apostles, was chosen by lot to fill the vacancy in the Twelve after the death of Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:16-25). According to early Church tradition, Matthias was among the seventy-two sent out by Jesus (Luke 10:1-20). Although little is known about his missionary journeys, historical accounts place him in various locations such as Ethiopia and Armenia, the first nation to embrace Christianity as its national religion. Tradition holds that Matthias was martyred for his faith, with some accounts pointing to Colchis in Asia Minor as the place of his death around AD 50. The Church of St. Matthias in Trier, Germany, claims to be his final burial site, making him the only one of the Twelve to be laid to rest in Europe north of the Alps.