Feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle

Lectionary: 684

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,  you will be saved.
For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The Scripture says, No one who believes in him will be put to shame.

 

The feast of Saint Andrew invariably falls toward the beginning of Advent. One of Jesus's first disciples leads us into this holy season. And so it is fitting that we should hear Saint Paul’s credal statement from his Epistle to the Romans, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

With these words sounding in our ears we are ushered into the Christmas season as into a vast and most sacred basilica. There are several great assurances in the following sentence about justification, salvation, and vindication. “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”

A world without faith must be managed with fearful instruments of force, manipulation, threats, and persuasive punishment. An especially effective instrument is shame. Those who were shamed physically, intellectually, morally, and sexually from the first days of their life might never rebel against the managers of this world. They are so conflicted with repressed, tormented memories of their weakness they dare not raise their voices even to warn others of danger.

Crucifixion was a very effective weapon of shame as the Romans used it. Victims were suspended near a well-travelled road into and out of the city so that their families, relatives, friends, admirers, disciples, and fellow citizens could hear and see their naked helplessness. Victims cried with fading strength to passersby for help. They begged for relief, water, and food even as they saw people hurrying by, who would not even look at them.

I met an African bishop who remembered as a boy when a band of terrorists invaded his village and murdered one man. They left his body in the street and told the villagers they would kill anyone who removed or buried the body. The corpse lay there for several days until hyenas carried it away. The boy and his companions avoided that intersection for many years after, often walking long distances around the haunted site.

But Saint Paul assures us, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” If the crucifixion of Jesus was traumatic for his disciples, his resurrection overwhelmed and healed its pain, grief, and sorrow. The sight of the Risen Lord elated his followers; they saw his wounds like gleaming jewels, more precious than gold or silver, more beautiful than diamonds and sapphires.  They saw his smile and completely forgot the horror of Friday. His immediate presence reassured them of forgiveness for their abandoning him; his gaze healed their scarred consciousness of guilt. Believing in him, they dismissed every feeling, impulse, and thought of shame. The sting of humiliation was gone.

The secular world uses shame more subtly than the Roman soldiers, but it still insists that we conform to its version of Christmas. We should max out our credit cards, eat lavishly and drink foolishly. We should get the Spirit of Christmas or risk being called Scrooge. There can be no relief due to unexpected developments “It’s such a shame that an epidemic would cancel our Christmas! We won’t let that happen, now will we?”

The apostles throughout our history remind us of what’s important. At the Lord’s invitation, Saint Andrew dropped his fishing nets and followed. We might appreciate the world’s occasional nods toward the Christ in Christmas, but we cannot be distracted for we also make intense preparation for the feast. With the Sacrament of Penance, prayer, and works of charity, we “turn away from sin and live by the Gospel.”