We are Easter People and Alleluia is our Song!           Dear Friends:

Sometimes only the poet can express the deeper meaning, the fathomless point. The turn of a phrase turns gore into beauty, loss into victory, and death into life. The poet's genius is not to disguise the gore but to reveal it as necessary for beauty to exist. I think Luci Shaw, in her not-so-well-known poem, accomplishes this precisely.

“It was never meant to burst from the body so fiercely,

to pour unchanneled from the five wounds and the unbandaged brow,

drowning the dark wood staining the stones and the gravel below,

clotting in the air dark with God’s absence.

It was created for a closed system -

the unbroken rhythms of human blood

binding the body of God, circulating hot, brilliant, saline, 

without interruption between the heart, lungs, and all cells.

But because he was once emptied I am each day refilled:

my spirit arteries pulse with the vital red of love; poured out,

it is his life that now pumps through my own heart’s core.

He bled, and died, and I have been transformed."    Luci Shaw

Life is messy and denying it does not make life easier or avoidable.  Jesus shows beauty and joy succeeding horror and gore by living through it; dying from it; and living after it! That makes us Easter People! Happy Easter!

Rev. Joseph Protano, St. Andrew Catholic Church

Later, in Luke 5:7, it mentions Simon was not the only fisherman on the boat, but it is not until Luke 6:14 that there is talk of Andrew being Simon Peter's brother.

However, the Gospel of John tells a separate story, stating Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist. When Jesus walked by one day, John the Baptist stated, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" It is then that Andrew and another made the decision to follow Jesus.

Little else is said about Andrew in the Gospels, but it is believed Andrew was one of the closer disciples to Jesus. It was he who told Jesus about the boy with the loaves and fishes, according to John 6:8. When Philip wanted to speak to Jesus about Greeks seeking him, he spoke to Andrew first. Andrew was also present at the last supper.

Per Christian tradition, Andrew went on to preach the Good News around the shores of the Black Sea and throughout what is now Greece and Turkey. Andrew was martyred by crucifixion in Patras. He was bound, rather than nailed, to a cross, as is described in the Acts of Andrew. He was crucified on a cross form known as "crux decussata," which is an X-shaped cross or a "saltire." Today this is commonly referred to as "St. Andrew's Cross." It is believed Andrew requested to be crucified this way, because he deemed himself "unworthy to be crucified on the same type of cross as Jesus."

Andrew's remains were originally preserved at Patras. However, some believe St. Regulus, who was a monk at Patras, received a vision telling him to hide some of Andrew's bones. Shortly after Regulus' dream, many of Andrew's relics were transferred to Constantinople by order of Roman emperor Constantius II around 357. Regulus later received orders in a second dream telling him to take the bones "to the ends of the earth." He was to build a shrine for them wherever he shipwrecked. He landed on the coat of Fife, Scotland.

In September 1964, Pope Paul VI had all of St. Andrew's relics that ended up in Vatican City sent back to Patras. Now, many of Andrew's relics and the cross on which he was martyred are kept in the Church of St. Andrew in Patras.

St. Andrew is venerated in Georgia as the first preacher of Christianity in that territory and in Cyprus for having struck the rocks creating a gush of healing waters upon landing on the shore.

His saltire cross is featured on the flag of Scotland and is represented in much of his iconography. He is commonly portrayed as an old man with long white hair and a beard, often holding the Gospel book or a scroll.

St. Andrew is the patron saint of fishermen and singers.