Tuesday in the First Week of Advent, November 30, 2021

The Feast of St. Andrew

Matthew 4:18-22

As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

St. Andrew was a young, unmarried man living with his brother Simon and his family in a seaside town of Galilee at the time the Lord called him.  His father, Jonah, would not have been alive at this time.  Unlike Simon’s, which was Hebrew, Andrew’s name was Greek.  He and Philip are the only two Apostles who have Greek names but no second Hebrew name.  This reflects his origin in Galilee, which bordered Greek-speaking lands and where Greek indeed was often spoken.  He was a very religious young man and followed John the Baptist in Judea, as we read in the Gospel of St. John.  He was the first of the future Apostles to meet Jesus, directed to him by John the Baptist.  At that meeting, Andrew spent several hours with the Lord, talking.  What he heard excited him, and he hurried to tell his brother Simon that he had found the Messiah (cf. John 2, 49).  It is unclear whether Simon also followed John or if Andrew went back to Galilee to tell him.  Andrew and Simon (later named “Peter”) probably followed the Lord intermittently for a while after that, with Jesus calling them when he wanted them.  In the Gospel for today’s Mass, Jesus issues a definitive call.  

For three years he followed the Lord throughout the length and breadth of Galilee and Judea, his faith growing and his expectations increasing.  Along with the others, he expected the Messiah to restore the kingdom of Israel, and he was prepared to fight for it.  The arrest of the Lord and his subsequent Passion and Death must have crushed him, and he fled and hid with the others.  During the forty days following the Resurrection, the Lord taught him and the other Apostles about the Church and the sacraments.  After Pentecost, he made his way north, preaching the Gospel in Greece and the area around the Black Sea.  According to ancient tradition, he was crucified in southern Greece around the year 60.

In the Gospel reading, St. Matthew tells us that to follow Jesus, Simon, Andrew, James, and John left their nets, their boats, and their families.  We can understand these in the spiritual sense as their sins and bad habits; their financial security; and their previous understanding of themselves.  “Nets” signify sin and bad habits because they are heavy and weigh us down, they promise us good, and they seem easy to get free from.  The fishing nets that Andrew was accustomed to would have been difficult to work with.  It had to be washed and cleaned after the night’s work was done.  It also had to be repaired regularly.  Sin weighs us down and makes us filthy.  It also promises us some perceived good.  And we think we can walk away from it whenever we want, although we have become its slaves.  It is hard to give up financial security for any reason, but we do when we see an opportunity for education, a better job, or a better job location.  Andrew gave this up in hope of a kingdom.  He did not receive a position in the kingdom he initially hoped for, but gained eternal life in the Kingdom of Jesus.  When we give up something for God, he will grant us a reward beyond anything we can hope for on earth: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,  neither has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2, 9).  In giving up his family and of having a family of his own, Andrew gave up his understanding of himself in order to be defined by Christ.  We often know ourselves from our families and their heritage.  We are the son or daughter of so-and-so, we went to this school, we lived in this city, we knew these people.  But to follow the Lord whole-heartedly, we become all his — the slave of the Lord, as the Blessed Virgin Mary acknowledged herself to be.  Thus, we follow his will and not someone else’s will or their expectations for us.  We are all his.

The traditional collect for the Mass on this day:

We suppliantly entreat your majesty, O Lord, that, even as the blessed Apostle Andrew was unto your Church a preacher and ruler, so now with you may he be a perpetual intercession for us.  Amen.