Today November 30

Today, the last day in November, we have the lovely feast of St. Andrew, first century. There are many stories and legends about this guy. I especially liked the story of his curing St. Matthew of blindness -- not because St. Matthew's prayers for himself were too weak, but because God wanted to use St. Andrew to demonstrate a grace. Or, as Pascal says, "God instituted prayer to show us the beauty of causality." (I love that.)

I do also recall that this first apostle, a fisherman and a disciple of St. John the Baptist, enabled a young man who followed him (I also heard it as a man who wanted to join the Church) and whose house was set afire by his angry parents, to put out the fire with only a single glass of water. (Thus his invocation against fire.) The arsonists were caught 5 days later. And I remember a story of Andrew's conversion of the pregnant wife of a murderer who subsequently could not give birth because she'd called on the goddess Diana (to hedge her bets, apparently). But that when she publicly renounced the false gods and acclaimed the One God (in whom she already believed), she was delivered of a healthy child.

But those are just legends. (Doesn't mean they're not true; just that we have only loose testimony for them.) We know Andrew was out fishing on a lake with his brother Simon when Jesus called them to become "fishers of men" and they left everything and followed him. (Of course, that leaves out the story of the miracle of the huge catch of fish upon Jesus' direction and Simon's passionate words: "Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man." That single line of his expresses so much faith and passion and humility, I think Simon Peter would be allowed into heaven merely for that! It expresses how I feel -- how anyone would feel -- in the presence of the living God.) And Andrew and Simon Peter had a house in Capharnaum, a house they opened up to the Master, when he taught there. Which gives me a chance to correct something a homeowning priest said in a homily one time. He said Jesus owned a home -- he wasn't as poor as everyone said he was -- and the house in Capharnaum proves it. But it was Peter's house! And Jesus had the USE of it, not the ownership. There. Glad that's clear.

Andrew saw the miracle at Cana, he attended upon Jesus and after the resurrection preached in Scythia. He was martyred on an X-shaped cross (also called a saltire cross) in the town of Patrae in Achaia. His relics were taken to Constantinople and some from there to Scotland, to a monastery once called Abernethy and now called St. Andrew's. He is the patron of Scotland and of Russia, and of course all of those named Andrew. Saint Andrew, pray for us.