Learning from St. Andrew How To Go Out To Meet Christ, Feast of St. Andrew, November 30, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle
November 30, 2015
Rom 10:9-18, Ps 19, Mt 4:18-22

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

• Today, as we celebrate the first weekday of Advent, we’re not vested in purple but in red, to celebrate the feast of the great apostle and martyr St. Andrew. But there’s a particular fittingness to focusing on St. Andrew at the beginning of Advent, because his life illustrates for us very well the fundamental response of Advent, to go out to meet, embrace and follow Christ the Lord when he comes. When Christ came into St. Andrew’s life, he not only went out to meet Christ but brought many others to meet him, too. And so today we can ponder the fundamental Advent dynamism as seen in his life as a disciple and an apostle.
• St. Andrew was someone who hungered for the Messiah, which is the attitude marking the first Advent. He longed for him. He was a disciple of St. John the Baptist, who was preparing the way for the Messiah, and as soon as the Precursor pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, he who takes away the sins of the world!,” Andrew immediately sought to follow Jesus, along with another disciple of the Baptist who was almost certainly the man who would become St. John the Evangelist, the one who would write down the details of the encounter for us (Jn 1). They would have been terrible private investigators, because even though they were tailing Jesus at a distance, he heard them, turned and said, “What do you seek?” In their nervousness they blurted out, “Where are you staying?” Jesus, inviting them into a dialogue and a relationship, said, “Come and see.” Because it was approaching sundown on the Sabbath — so great was the first impression of that first encounter with Jesus that St. John noted the precise time, “about 4 pm” — they needed to spend about the next 26 hours with him.
• As soon as they were able to travel again after the completion of the Sabbath, Andrew ran to his brother Simon and announced, “We have found the Messiah!” His fulfilled desire led him to try to bring others to have their same desires filled. And he brought his brother to Jesus because he wanted his brother to experience the same joy. When Simon came with Andrew to meet Jesus, Jesus said something extraordinary, “You are Simon, son of Jonah. You will be called Cephas (Peter, from the word for Rock). Little did Andrew know what Jesus’ plans would have been for his brother, that he would become the rock on whom Jesus would build his Church, the one to whom he would give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. All he did was bring Simon to Jesus and Jesus did the rest. Likewise, we never know when we bring others to Jesus what he will do with them. They may become the next great saint. They may become a future priest or even pope. What we need to concentrate on is simply sharing the joy of our encounter with Christ with others. Christ has come into the world for them as well.
• But St. Andrew’s introducing St. Peter to Jesus the Messiah is not the only time he facilitated an encounter with Christ who had come. Later on, when Jesus had been teaching the vast crowds for hours, it was getting dark and the people had no food, some of the apostles encouraged Jesus to dismiss the crowd so that they could get something to eat, saying that even 200 days wages would not be enough to feed a multitude of 5000 men not counting women and children (Jn 6). After Jesus told them to give the crowds something to eat, Andrew brought a young boy who had five buns and two fish to Jesus. Jesus took those meager gifts, thanked the Father for them, and miraculously multiplied them in a way that not only the crowd ate to satiation, but they had twelve wicker baskets left over, a tangible reminder for each of the twelve apostles of just what Jesus can do when we bring others and their gifts to him. We, too, should learn the lesson. When we can bring others to Jesus, when we can get them generously to give whatever they have to him, Jesus can multiply those offerings and do tremendous things. Our task, like Andrew, is just to match-make others with the Lord.
• The third time Andrew did this matchmaking was when a bunch of Greeks came saying, “We wish to see Jesus!” (Jn 12). Philip brought them to Andrew and Andrew brought them to Jesus. As soon as Jesus got word, he exclaimed, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus immediately shifted gears toward the fulfillment of his Messianic, long-awaited mission, as a grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying to bear fruit for our salvation. Little did Andrew know when he was bringing these Greeks to meet Jesus that he would be fulfilling the prophecy announced through Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah that God’s light would be brought to all the nations. He just brought them and the rest, we can say, was salvation history. Likewise we never know what the next stages are in the history of salvation of those we encounter or of the whole world. We just try to bring people to Jesus.
• As we enter into this powerful liturgical season of Advent, we can ponder our own calling to follow Jesus and our mission to help others to go out to meet Christ who has come likewise for them. Andrew has been called by the Greeks throughout the centuries the protoclete because he was the first one called, but in some ways he was also the proto-apostolos in becoming the first to call others. We are not the first called but just as much as St. Andrew was called so have we been summoned. And just as much as Andrew responded to that encounter by bringing others to Christ, so we’re sent out at the end of the Mass to seek to bring about that encounter between Christ and others, which is the essence of Advent and of human life. And the best way we prepare for that mission and live out that encounter is here at Mass, where the same Lord Jesus who has come in history and will come in majesty comes to us in mystery. This is the same Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world whom St. Andrew followed at St. John the Baptist’s indication. May we follow him as wholeheartedly and let that encounter become the source of our apostolate today and always!

The readings for this Mass were: 

Reading 1
ROM 10:9-18