Vigils Reading – St Andrew

THE APOSTLE,

ST ANDREW

From a sermon by St John Henry Newman7

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St John the Evangelist, [introduces St Andrew in his gospel] under

circumstances which show that, little as is known of this Apostle now, he was, in

fact, very high in the favour and confidence of his Lord. In his twelfth chapter he

describes Andrew as bringing to Christ certain Greeks who came up to

Jerusalem to worship and who were desirous of seeing Him. And, what is

remarkable, these strangers had first applied to St Philip, who, though an

Apostle himself, instead of taking upon him to introduce them had recourse to

his fellowtownsman St Andrew… “Philip comes, and tells Andrew; and again,

Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.”

These two Apostles are also mentioned together in the sixth chapter of the

same Gospel, at the consultation which preceded the miracle of the loaves and

fishes; and there again Andrew is engaged, as before in the office of introducing

strangers to Christ. “There is a lad here,” he says to his Lord, a lad who perhaps,

had not courage to come forward of himself, “who has five barley loaves and

two small fishes.”… After our Lord had predicted the ruin of the Temple, “Peter,

James, John, and Andrew asked Him privately: ‘Tell us when shall these

things be?‘” and it was to these four that our Saviour revealed the signs of his

coming, and of the end of the world. Here St Andrew is represented as in the

special confidence of Christ; and associated too with those Apostles whom he is

known to have selected from the Twelve, on various occasions, by tokens of his

peculiar Favour.

Little is known of St Andrew in addition to these inspired notices of him.

He is said to have preached the Gospel in Scythia; and he was at length martyred

in Achaia. His death was by crucifixion; that kind of cross being used, according

to the tradition, which still goes by his name. Yet, little as Scripture tells us

concerning him, it affords us enough for a lesson, and that an important one.

These are the facts before us. St Andrew was the first convert among the

Apostles; he was especially in our Lord’s confidence; thrice is he described as

introducing others to him; lastly, he is little known in history, while the place of

dignity and the name of highest renown have been allotted to his brother Simon,

whom he was the means of bringing to the knowledge of his Saviour.

Our lesson then is this; that those persons are not necessarily the most

useful in their generation, nor the most favored by God, who make the most

noise in the world, and who seem to be principals in the great changes and

events recorded in history; on the contrary, that even when we are able to point

to a certain number of persons as the real instruments of any great blessings

vouchsafed to humankind, our relative estimate of them, one with another, is

often very erroneous: so that, on the whole, if we would trace truly the hand of

God in human affairs, and pursue his bounty as displayed in the world to its

original sources, we must unlearn our admiration of the powerful and

distinguished, our reliance on the opinion of society, our respect for the

decisions of the learned or the multitude, and turn our eyes to private life,

watching in all we read or witness for the true sign of God’s presence, the graces

of personal holiness manifested in his elect; which, weak as they may seem to

humankind, are mighty through God, and have an influence upon the course of

his Providence, and bring about great events in the world at large, when the

wisdom and strength of the natural man are of no avail.