Catholic Heroes . . . St. Andrew
By DEB PIROCH
St. Andrew is the “Protokletos” or “First Called.”
Andrew means “manly” or “courageous one” and he was an apostle, a martyr, and a brother to St. Peter. Born on the Sea of Galilee and a fisherman like his brother, he was less than 40 kilometers from Nazareth. Jesus would discover the brothers there, along with Philip, and call them to be “fishers of men.”
On Andrew’s recent feast day of November 30, Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wis., in a YouTube spot pointed out Andrew’s great humility. It was Andrew who brought the knowledge of Christ as the Messiah to his brother, Peter, and then humbly stepped back, not feeling the need to interject himself or assume any importance or credit beyond that happy discovery. Andrew was already a follower of St. John the Baptist and when he heard John say: “Behold, the Lamb of God!” he followed Him.
Andrew serves as an example of evangelization for us. Imagine if every one of us went to someone in our life and simply said, in one way or another, “I have found the Messiah! I have the Savior of the World, the Son of God! And He is present in the Eucharist and abides in the Church and speaks in the Scriptures”. Imagine if every one of us did that with absolute confidence Andrew evidences in John’s Gospel?
Andrew was given a Greek name by their parents, as Peter was given an Aramaic one, signifying an openness in the family toward Jewish-Gentile culture. Pope Benedict, back in 2006, taught that in the Gospel, shortly before the Passion, Greeks were coming to worship, probably at Passover, and Andrew was helping to interpret for them to Jesus.
But Christ goes much further:
The Lord’s answer to their question — as so often in John’s Gospel — appears enigmatic, but precisely in this way proves full of meaning. Jesus said to the two disciples and, through them, to the Greek world: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I solemnly assure you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (12:23-24).
“In other words, Jesus was prophesying about the Church of the Greeks, the Church of the pagans, the Church of the world, as a fruit of His Pasch. Some very ancient traditions not only see Andrew, who communicated these words to the Greeks, as the interpreter of some Greeks at the meeting with Jesus recalled here, but consider him the Apostle to the Greeks in the years subsequent to Pentecost. They enable us to know that for the rest of his life he was the preacher and interpreter of Jesus for the Greek world.
“Peter, his brother, traveled from Jerusalem through Antioch and reached Rome to exercise his universal mission; Andrew, instead, was the Apostle of the Greek world. So, it is that in life and in death they appear as true brothers — a brotherhood that is symbolically expressed in the special reciprocal relations of the See of Rome and of Constantinople, which are truly Sister Churches” — Pope Benedict (June 14, 2006).
What else we know is that of the first four apostles, Andrew seems the most distant. We do know that he evangelized to the Black Sea, to Greece, to Turkey. (Georgia and Cyprus?) And he is just as popular in the East, among the Orthodox. We do not know with certainty everywhere that he traveled.
But there are only some short biblical references that tell us a little more about St. Andrew. We have already mentioned that in the Gospel of John he hears John the Baptist call out to Christ and Andrew therefore recognizes Him as the Messiah. Later in the Gospel of Matthew, when Christ calls the brothers to be “fishers of men,” Andrew is with his brother Peter. And the night when the men fished and fished but caught nothing until Christ asked them to lower their nets? And the boat nearly foundered with fish? Andrew was among those present.
The last Gospel reference is linked forever to St. Andrew’s Cross. In John 6:8, Andrew points out to Christ that a little boy has five barley loaves and two fish, “But what are these among so many?” And Christ works a miracle, to satiate the hunger of those present. Andrew, as we mentioned at the start, would be martyred, for refusing to stop preaching Christianity. He felt, like Peter, that he was also too unworthy to be killed by crucifixion like our Lord, so they executed him on a crux decussata or an “x-like cross.” Simply think of the multiplication sign for loaves and fishes! This is the sign known as St. Andrew’s Cross.
According to Pope Benedict’s 2006 audience, “The Passion of Andrew” is a pious tradition dating back to the beginning of the sixth century, and the words with which Andrew greeted his cross: “Hail, O Cross, inaugurated by the Body of Christ and adorned with His limbs as though they were precious pearls. Before the Lord mounted you, you inspired an earthly fear. Now, instead, endowed with heavenly love, you are accepted as a gift. Believers know of the great joy that you possess, and of the multitude of gifts you have prepared. I come to you, therefore, confident and joyful, so that you too may receive me exultant as a disciple of the One who was hung upon you….O blessed Cross, clothed in the majesty and beauty of the Lord’s limbs!…Take me, carry me far from men, and restore me to my Teacher, so that, through you, the one who redeemed me by you, may receive me. Hail, O Cross; yes, hail indeed!”
And Benedict finished, saying: “Here, as can be seen, is a very profound Christian spirituality. It does not view the Cross as an instrument of torture but rather as the incomparable means for perfect configuration to the Redeemer, to the grain of wheat that fell into the earth.
“Here we have a very important lesson to learn: Our own crosses acquire value if we consider them and accept them as a part of the Cross of Christ, if a reflection of His light illuminates them [emphasis mine].”
After Andrew’s death, his bones say some went to Constantinople, Amalfi in Italy, and a fourth-century monk by the name of St. Regulus was told to spread the relics where he shipwrecked, bringing them even to Scotland. Other nations honoring Andrew include Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.
May the Light of the World illuminate our Heavens! May the angel choirs and countless creatures of our dear Lord sing to the Exaltation of His Virgin Birth! Gloria in Excelsis Deo!