St. Andrew

Who they were

Andrew was the Baptist's disciple standing on the Jordan's bank when John pointed and said behold the Lamb of God. Andrew followed, spent the day, and then did the thing that defines him in the fourth Gospel: he first found his own brother Simon, and brought him. The Church's entire Petrine story begins with Andrew fetching his brother.

He appears at the Gospel's practical moments. It is Andrew who finds the boy with the five loaves, and Andrew whom the Greeks approach when they want to see Jesus: the apostle of introductions. The tradition takes his later preaching around the Black Sea and Greece, and his martyrdom at Patras on a diagonal cross, the saltire that became Scotland's flag. The journeys of his relics made him patron of Scotland, Russia, and Constantinople alike, the apostle the East and West share most easily. His feast on 30 November anchors the calendar, since Advent begins on the Sunday nearest it.

Why people turn to St. Andrew

Fishermen and everyone who works the water, with his brother. And, his real specialty, people praying someone into the faith. Andrew's method was not argument but come and see.

How to ask their intercession

Name the person you wish would come and see, and ask Andrew's prayers to be the kind of introducer he was: patient, personal, and unpushy.