St Andrew, Apostle of Advent.

Andrew the Apostle, First-Called

 Today is the feast of St Andrew, the Apostle, and I'm rather struck by on this feast's place at the head of Advent. Advent always begins on the Sunday closest to the feast of St Andrew, November 30, and so we might call Saint Andrew the Apostle of Advent. Looking to Andrew and his mission as Apostle, we learning something key to living the spirit of Advent.

Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Jesus in a two-fold way. The first is a joyful preparation in expectation of Christmas when we celebrate the first coming of the Son of God, incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary in the city of King David to be our Messiah. The second way of preparation is in expectation of when Jesus comes again in his glory to bring forth the Kingdom of God in its fulness. 

How we prepare for this Second Coming is where Andrew and the other Apostles come in. Now the word "apostle" means one who is sent. The Apostles are those Jesus sent to preach the Good News, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God that he handed on to them. Where he sends is to the nations for their conversion, that is to us.

Now here is the key to the connection between Advent and the Apostles: Jesus, speaking to his Apostles, told them, "He who receives you, receives me." That's huge because it means that the way we prepare for the coming of Christ is to receive the ones he sent to come to us, that is the Apostles. We receive them by hearing what they preach, and believing what they preach in our heart, as St Paul teaches us in the first Mass reading for today.

There are two important things to remember here: the first is that all of this begins with God. God sends his Son; the Son calls the Apostles to himself in order to be Sent; the Apostles come to us, and what they preach calls our hearts to faith in Jesus. The intiative here is all God, not ours, in how we become linked to this chain of grace.

The second thing to remember is that God never calls someone without giving them a mission. In today's Gospel, we hear of Jesus' call to Andrew, along with Peter, from their fishing nets, giving them the mission to become fishers of men. To what mission then are we called, while we prepare for Jesus' coming? St Paul also tells us: we are to "confess with our hearts" what we have heard and believed.

This confession of faith is more than reciting the Creed at mass—it is proclaiming publicly what we belive, that is, our mission is to be evangelizers. This means that our preparing for Christ, our living out the Advent spirit, is anything but a passive waiting. Instead, it is a vigilant waiting, announcing to others for whom we wait, and calling them to watch together for the One who comes. 

Following this chain of grace from our mission of evangelization to the Apostles, especially to St Andrew who in the Gospel of John we learn was 'the first to be called' as he is named by the Eastern Church, we see how appropriate his feast stands at the head of Advent when we prepare to receive the One to come by receiving those Apostles he sent to herald his reign.