The Life
Andrew was a fisherman of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, the older brother of Peter. Before the Lord called him he was already a disciple of Saint John the Forerunner. He was at the Jordan when the Lord came to be baptized. When John pointed and said “Behold the Lamb of God,” Andrew left John and followed Jesus. He was the first of all the apostles to be called — which is why the Church gives him the title Protokletos, the First-Called. The very first thing he did after meeting the Lord was to go find his brother Peter and bring him to Christ. After Pentecost he preached around the Black Sea, in Greece, in Thrace, in Russia, and as far as the Caucasus. He was crucified at Patras in Greece on an X-shaped cross around the year 60. The Church remembers him on November 30.
Andrew had been a disciple of Saint John the Forerunner. He was at the Jordan when the Lord came. He had heard John preach about the One who was coming, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Then one day he saw the Lord himself walking by, and John said: “Behold the Lamb of God.” Andrew left John right then and followed Jesus. He went and stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon. By the time he came back out, his life had changed forever. The next thing he did was find his brother Peter.
Andrew did not keep the news to himself. The very first thing he did, after meeting the Lord, was to go find his brother Simon and tell him: “We have found the Messiah.” He brought Simon to the Lord. The Lord looked at him and said: “You shall be called Cephas” — the Rock, Peter. Andrew’s very first action as a disciple was to bring his brother to Christ. He has been the patron of fraternal evangelism ever since. He shows every Christian what the supreme first work of authentic faith looks like: not preaching to crowds, not establishing institutions, not winning arguments, but quietly going to a brother or sister or friend and saying: come, see what I have found.
There is a small but beautiful detail in the feeding of the five thousand. The Gospel of John records that when the Lord asked Philip where they could buy bread for so many people, Philip was overwhelmed. But Andrew — quietly, as always — had been looking around. He brought a small boy to the Lord. The boy had five barley loaves and two small fish, his lunch. “But what are they among so many?” Andrew asked. The Lord blessed the bread and the fish and fed five thousand men, plus women and children. Twelve baskets of fragments were left over. Andrew, the bringer, had brought even the small boy with his small lunch, and the Lord had multiplied it.
After Pentecost the apostles drew lots to determine where each would go to preach the Gospel. Andrew received the regions of the Black Sea, Bithynia, Thrace, Macedonia, Scythia, and the Caucasus. He traveled extensively for many years through what is now Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, southern Russia, and Ukraine. The Russian tradition holds that he came up the Dnieper river and stopped on the hills where Kiev would later be built. Looking at those hills he prophesied: “upon these hills shall shine the beneficence of God, and there will be a great city here, and God shall raise up many churches.” He set up a cross there, blessed the place, and went on. Centuries later Saint Vladimir would build Kiev on those hills and bring the entire Russian people into the faith. Andrew also founded the small fishing village of Byzantium, which Constantine the Great would later refound as Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire.
Andrew’s last preaching was in Achaia in southern Greece. The miracles he worked at Patras converted nearly the entire population, including Maximilla, the wife of the Roman prefect Aegeates. Aegeates himself was not converted; he resented his wife’s embrace of the new faith. He had Andrew arrested and condemned to death by crucifixion. So that the suffering would last longer, the prefect ordered Andrew bound to the cross with ropes rather than nailed, and chose for him a cross of an unusual shape — in the form of an X — so he would not have the dignity of dying on the same cross as the Lord. Andrew received the sentence with joy. He preached from the cross for two days. He gave up his soul to the Lord on the third day, around the year 60.
These two short sentences contain the whole shape of Andrew’s apostolic life. He found his brother. He told him simply: we have found the Messiah. He brought him to Jesus. There were no theological speeches, no preaching of sermons, no establishing of schools. There was only this: a brother going to find a brother, telling him the simplest possible news, and bringing him to the Lord. The Church has loved Andrew for two thousand years because he shows us what authentic Christian witness looks like at its deepest. We do not need to be eloquent. We do not need to have all the answers. We need only to find the people who are closest to us and to bring them to the One we have found.
Maximilla, the wife of the prefect, took down Andrew’s body from the cross and buried him with great honor. She lived out her remaining days in faith, never returning to Aegeates. Andrew’s relics were originally kept at Patras. In the fourth century the Emperor Constantius II transferred the body to Constantinople, where it was placed in the Church of the Holy Apostles alongside the relics of Saint Luke and Saint Timothy. After the Crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204 the relics were taken to the West. In 1964, Pope Paul VI returned the saint’s skull to Patras as a gesture of goodwill. In 1980 the cross was returned. To this day the head and the X-shaped cross are venerated together at the great Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Patras, where he was martyred.
Andrew matters to every Orthodox Christian for many reasons. He was the first of all the apostles to be called by the Lord. He was the brother of Peter, who became the chief of the apostles. He was the apostle of the Black Sea, of Constantinople, of Russia, and of so many of the lands of the eastern Christian world. He was the founder of the small village of Byzantium that would become the capital of the Christian Roman Empire. He preached on the hills where Kiev would later be built. He died on an X-shaped cross at Patras around the year 60. He is the patron of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, of Russia, of Romania, of Ukraine, of Greece, of Scotland, and of fishermen everywhere. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever brought a sibling or a spouse or a friend to the Lord. His feast on November 30 is the very last feast before the beginning of the Nativity Fast on November 15 (Old Calendar) or December 1 (New Calendar) and stands at the threshold of every Christmas.