Yesterday was the feast day of St. Andrew, one of Jesus' first two Apostles (along with John). I have to admit to you that Andrew is probably my favorite saint. I hear about him so often during my weekly meetings with my friends of Communion and Liberation. Many times I have heard the Gospel reading from John.
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus. He first found his own brother Simon and told him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed).
As I was sitting in a Communion service yesterday, I began to think about Andrew. What would have possessed him to follow this man? He probably was married and had a family. He was a hard-working man, one would assume. He had an established life. But I think that he was probably looking for something more. He was seeking something. And because he was looking for something, something for his happiness, the meaning of life, something more, he was able to recognize Jesus. So he was able to run to his brother Simon and with confidence say, "We have found the Messiah."
Luigi Giussani, founder of the Communion and Liberation movement, wrote:
But imagine those two who stay there listening to Him for hours and then they have to go home. He says goodbye to them and they go their way silently, silent because full of the impression they have received of the felt mystery, about which they had had a feeling beforehand and then they had actually felt... And Andrew goes into his house and puts his cloak down, and his wife says: “Andrew, what’s wrong with you? You’re different, what happened?” Imagine that he burst into tears in her arms, and that she, upset by all this, continued to ask him: “But what’s wrong?” And he holding his wife, who had never felt herself held that way before: he was a different person. He was a different person! He was the same, but he was different. If anyone had asked him: “Who are you?” he would have said: “I understand that I have become someone else... after hearing that person, that man, I have become another person.”
Quotation is from "Recognizing Christ", a transcription of a meditation by Fr Luigi Giussani during the Spiritual Exercises of the Communion and Liberation university students in December 1994
Are we seekers? Are we looking for something more, or are we simply going through the motions of life, being swept up by the tide of day to day life. Jesus is calling us to an openness, to seek Him each day, to look for the ways He is revealing Himself to us. I can honestly say that recently, I have not been seeking Him as I should. Sometimes it becomes difficult in the day to day to continue to be open to looking, to searching. But that's what Andrew was about. We don't know much about him, but from what I do know, I can tell that Andrew was so open, that he was looking for Christ, and so he found Him!!!
St. Andrew, help me to become a different person through meeting Christ. Help me to be a seeker. Help me to be searching--to be looking for that something more that only Christ can fulfill in my life.
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