SAINT ANDREW, APOSTLE (FEAST)

Their voice has gone forth to all the earth. 

In our first reading, St. Paul says that the proclamation of the gospel has the power to bring salvation. But that can happen only as evangelists travel throughout the earth carrying the good news (Romans 10:13-15). So when Jesus called Simon Peter and his brother Andrew—whose feast we celebrate today—to “Come after me,” he also promised them, “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19).

Tradition tells us that this apostle covered a vast amount of territory on his missionary journeys. Andrew preached as far west as Greece, as far north as the Baltic Sea, as far east as western China, and as far south as central Africa! He spent the last years of his life in present-day Romania and then returned to Greece, where he was martyred at age eighty.

Andrew definitely became a “fisher of men.” His “voice has gone forth” to much of the known world (Romans 10:18), and countless people have turned to Jesus as a result. Through Andrew’s proclamation of the Lord—and through all the other apostles’ travels as well—the whole ancient world heard the good news. But not just because of their own efforts: it was the Spirit working through them that provided the groundwork for the spread of Christianity around the world.

That same Spirit is at work today in ways that Andrew and the other apostles probably could never have imagined. Television, radio, and the internet can broadcast the good news to “the ends of the world” (Romans 10:18). Bibles and devotional books proclaim Christ in far-flung lands. And missionaries travel by airplane or boat across the globe with the message of salvation.

The gospel needs your voice, too. Whether you’re sending an email or text to a distant friend or relative or getting together with a neighbor, you are called to share the good news, just as Andrew was. Because how can anyone believe if the message is not proclaimed to them (Romans 10:14)?

“Jesus, I want to join your apostles as a messenger of your kingdom today!”

Romans 10:9-18
Psalm 19:8-11
Matthew 4:18-22