ANDREW THE APOSTLE

The Day of St. Andrew the Apostle is one of the most significant and celebrated apostolic commemorations in the liturgical calendar in many nations and countries. Many Christian nations, from Russia to Scotland, consider Andrew their patron.

Unfortunately, the New Testament does not contain any indications of the circumstances of Andrew’s preaching after the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles.

Unfortunately, the New Testament does not contain any indications of the circumstances of Andrew’s preaching after the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. The first Christians lived in anticipation of the Savior’s imminent return to earth at the Second Coming, and therefore did not try to preserve information about the details of the apostolic sermon.

According to the testimony of the “Ecclesiastical History” of Eusebius of Caesarea (III, 3, 1), and other ancient legends, Andrei preached in Scythia, by which the authors of that time understood the areas on the Don and Danube, near the shores of the Black Sea, in Cappadocia, Galatia, Bithynia and Achaea, where, in the north-west of modern Greece, in the city of Patras, he ended his days as a martyr, being crucified on a special cross in the shape of the letter “X”, which later received the name “St. Andrew’s”.

In 356–357, the son of Constantine the Great, Emperor Constantius II (337–361), transferred the relics of the Apostle to Constantinople. Thus began a special centuries-old tradition of theological veneration of St. Andrew.

In accordance with the text of the Gospel of John about the calling of the Apostles, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition the name of Andrew the First-Called was assigned to him (cf. John 1:40). Perhaps none of the Apostles in history was considered the direct founder of so many local Churches as Andrew.

The fact is that the structure of the Ancient Church in the first centuries of history was complex due to the abundance of ministries and charismatic gifts, and, at the same time, it was very simple.

The communion of the three main episcopal sees, Antioch, which in the first decades of Christian history was the center of all missionary activity of all apostolic Christianity, Alexandria - the largest city in the East, and Rome - the capital of the Great Empire, was the basis of the unity of all communities and churches. Each of these three capitals of Universal Christianity was founded by the Apostles, and, in the eyes of all others, had an undeniable and genuine succession and primacy. The importance of this principle, in particular, is indicated by the Creed with its words about faith in the “Apostolic Church.” The Church is called apostolic, among other things, because it was founded directly by the Apostles.

However, with the return of Jerusalem to the status of a Christian city and episcopal see at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the founding of Constantinople in 330, the so-called “Constantinian” Churches were added to the apostolic sees.

The complex system of checks and contradictions within the framework of a single Empire led to the fact that, as a result, at the IV Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon (451), the entire Church was, as it were, “divided” between five Patriarchates: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. A system of Pentarchy arose, that is, literally, “five powers.” It is extremely important that the territories of the “Constantinian” patriarchates, Constantinople and Jerusalem, were “annexed” from one of the Churches, Antioch, to the detriment of the latter, laying, alas, the beginning of its historical derogation.

To justify this ecclesial revolution in the system of church government, the Church of Constantinople began to claim apostolic origin, citing the fact that, according to Tradition, Andrew himself preached in the vicinity of the future capital on the Bosporus. Subsequently, new, great titular patriarchates, among which Moscow and Bucharest, adopted this legacy, which had by that time been sanctified by church antiquity.