St Andrew and Vocation - By Sr Ann Catherine Swailes o.p.

At the end of this month we celebrate the feast of St Andrew. It’s a chance for Scots, Russians, fishermen and golfers to give thanks for his patronage and ask for his continued intercession, but also an opportunity to reflect on a theme relevant to all Christians – the theme of vocation.

The story is simple. As it is told in St John’s Gospel, Andrew sees Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee, hears John the Baptist acclaim him as the Lamb of God and immediately follows him. From St Matthew we learn that Andrew, like his brother Simon and their colleagues James and John, was a fisherman, called from his boat and his nets to become a fisher of men. After this highly dramatic episode, Andrew fades somewhat from the Gospel scene, conspicuous only by his absence on those occasions when the other three are privileged to share special moments of intimate prayer with Jesus, on the mountain of the Transfiguration and in the Garden of Gethsemane.

That we know so little about St Andrew is perhaps significant. At the heart of every vocation, which is another way of saying at the heart of the unique relationship each one of us has with the Lord, there is a secret. Each of us, made in the image of the God whom we are called to love unreservedly but whom we can never know exhaustively, is a mystery, not only to others, but even to ourselves. We should expect it to be difficult, therefore, to articulate to others, but even sometimes to ourselves, the ways in which the Lord seems to be leading us. Silence about “what happened next” between Andrew and Jesus is, then, entirely appropriate.

And yet, slightly paradoxically, that brings us back to one of the few things we do know about Andrew: he didn’t come to the Lord alone, but with Simon, James, and John. Indeed, in St John’s account, it is Andrew who introduces his brother to Jesus. It is impossible to imagine that the four of them didn’t have conversations in which they shared their excitement and their confusion about this strange turn of events, speaking perhaps haltingly, with embarrassment, but surely overwhelmingly with astonished joy This can serve as a reminder of how valuable it is for us to have companions when, in our turn, we are trying to make sense of what God is doing in our lives. We all need good friends to whom we can voice our insights, our apprehensiveness, even our frustration, but above all, our delight and our gratitude that we too are called to follow the Lord in whatever way most befits the unrepeatable and infinitely beloved personality he has given us.

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