Saint Andrew

Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter and, like him, a fisherman in Bethsaida, on the Sea of Galilee. His name is Greek, which says something about that place: it was a border town, with a Hellenic community. The Orthodox call him Protokletos, the first called, and the reason is in the Gospel of John: he was a disciple of the Baptist, and he was the first to follow Jesus. And the first thing he did was go looking for his brother to tell him. It’s a constant: in the Gospels, Andrew is always the one who brings someone to someone else — he’s the one who points out the boy with the five loaves, and he’s the one the Greeks turn to when they want to see Jesus. Tradition sends him to preach in Greece and along the Black Sea, as far as Byzantium, and that’s why the Patriarchate of Constantinople considers him its founder — just as Rome considers Peter. The two brothers, in the end, stand at the origin of the two Churches that split apart, and every November 30 a Roman delegation goes to Istanbul and every June 29 an Orthodox delegation comes to Rome. He died in Patras, crucified on an X-shaped cross that bears his name. That shape is on the flag of Scotland, whose patron saint he is, and from there it ended up in the Union Jack. His relics are in Amalfi. If your name is Andrew, today is your name day.