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St. Andrew
November 30, 2017
St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter, was the very first of the disciples to know Jesus; at the Master’s call he at once left his nets and followed Him to become a “fisher of men.” We know hardly anything of his subsequent apostolic career. The old accounts of his martyrdom depict him crucified on two beams fastened together in the form of a “St. Andrew’s cross” and contain fine passages on faithfulness to Christ and love of the cross, and for this reason St. Andrew has become known to Christian devotion as the apostle of the cross. Constantinople, which possessed his relics, used the fact of his being the first apostle to be called, as an argument in disputes with Rome. But Rome, too, has always held him in high honor, and two important relics are enshrined there: one of his arms brought back from Constantinople by St. Gregory the Great and placed by him in the church of the monastery St. Andrew on the Coelian Hill, and his head placed by Pius II near the tomb of his brother, St. Peter. His body now rests at the cathedral of Amalfi in Italy.