During this Holy Year Traces will tell the story of the disciples whom Jesus of Nazareth chose to make Himself known to the world. From that attraction came the beginning of an uninterrupted flow of friendship that reaches all the way to us. In the experiences of these men lie the truth and reasonableness of the Gospels and the tradition

"It was about four in the afternoon…." Thus John, in his Gospel, fixes the instant that was decisive for his life, that of his first encounter with Jesus in Bethany, on the Jordan River. In that moment, in that remote corner of Galilee, Jesus' gaze fell on some men ("lawless sinners," they were called by St. Barnabas, Paul's companion). They weren't sure who He was, but they followed Him; it was something amazing, and not something they could define. For this Holy Year, Traces has chosen to tell the story of these men, the apostles whom He approached first, of these men through whom He entered the world. These are historical reconstructions that, albeit succinct, permit the discovery of the quantity of truth and reasonableness to be found in the Gospels and in the tradition. "The more you think about Andrew and John as they watch Him speak, the more you understand what has touched you now. Thus you only think about John and Andrew because He has touched you now; but you will not understand what has touched you now if you do not think about John and Andrew." (L. Giussani The Acctraction that Is Jesus) This first installment is devoted to Andrew and Peter, the two brothers from Bethsaida.

"Simon, Do You Love Me?"

BY GIUSEPPE FRANGI

Who was Peter? The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul's Letters, those by Peter himself, are full of details about him as they are for no other figure. We know a great deal about him: he was certainly a man of stocky build, because every time strength was called for, he was right there in the front line. He was impulsive and impetuous by nature, definitely generous. He was close in age from Jesus, he came from Bethsaida in Galilee, on the eastern shores of Lake Tiberias, the son of a family of fishermen (his father's name was John). Like that of his brother Andrew, his name was Greek in origin, an indication that the area they came from was cosmopolitan: "Galilee of the Gentiles," Isaiah and Matthew call it, and this is important for understanding Simon's personal history. Comparing the four Gospel sources, Peter Thiede has reconstructed Peter's meeting with Christ: Jesus saw him for the first time in Bethany, on the Jordan River. The man of Nazareth had already called John and Andrew, disciples of John the Baptist. It was Andrew who brought Peter to Jesus during the Passover period. Their next meeting, the decisive one for Peter, was in Capernaum, a place on the western shores of Lake Tiberias. He and his brother had moved their fishing activity there. Jesus saw them, climbed into their boat, and asked them to pull away from the shore a short distance so that the crowd who was following could hear Him. Then, after He had finished preaching, Jesus asked them to do something that, in terms of their professional fishing experience, seemed to them completely irrational: cast their nets in the middle of the day when in much more favorable conditions, at night, they had not caught even one fish. This is the point where Luke reports the first words addressed directly to Peter. And they are words that reveal Peter's character: first he objects to the absurdity of the request, then he bows his head and obeys.
The miraculous catch of fish is the true turning point in Peter's life. Luke writes succinctly of him and h is companions that "bringing their boats back to land they left everything and followed Him."

At Peter's house
The next scene takes place at Peter's house in Capernaum. He lived there with his family: his mother-in-law, his brother Andrew, and his wife (whom the Gospels do not mention, but Eusebius and Clement say she died a martyr in Corinth before Peter arrived in Rome in 42 A.D.). The house was not small, probably all on one floor, and it became the base for Jesus and His disciples: Mark tells us that they slept here. The healing of Peter's mother-in-law (whom Luke, a physician, describes as forced to lie on a mat because she was in the grip of a high fever), attracted so much curiosity that "there was no room left, even in front of the door." (Mk 2:2) Capernaum is full of archaeological evidence confirming the truth of the Gospel story. The tradition that recognizes the remains of Peter's house is ancient (it goes back to 381, when the pilgrim Hegerias told of a church that incorporated the walls of the apostle's house); the remains of the basalt floor confirm the location of the synagogue attended by Jesus ("And at once on leaving the synagogue, He went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew." [Mk 1:29]) Most importantly, the ruins have been found of the buildings where Jesus healed the paralyzed and suffering servant of the Roman centurion of Capernaum. This was certainly a crucial episode for Peter's development. It showed him how Jesus was open to everyone, even the Romans, enemies and pagans, who were stationed very close to Peter's house. Peter himself would remember this a few years later when, upsetting some members of the community in Jerusalem, he went to the house of the centurion of Caesarea who had sent for him ("God has made it clear to me that I must not call anyone profane or unclean. That is why I made no objection to coming when I was sent for." [Acts 10:28-29])

A miraculous deliverance
The story of the centurion and the relationship with the Gentiles links the two poles that were crucial for Peter's life: on one side Capernaum, where the fisherman left everything and followed Jesus; on the other Rome, where the ex-fisherman lived for many years and was martyred. The Peter we find in the Acts of the Apostles is a deeply changed man: Jesus' eyes on him when the cock crowed in the courtyard of the high priest's house made him perceive the power and liberation of God's mercy. This is a mature Peter who knows how to handle the most complex situations, who knows how to be astute, who discovers a virtue that had seemed so alien to his nature: patience. Twice imprisoned, twice he was miraculously freed. After his second imprisonment he stopped by the house in Jerusalem of the mother of Mark, the faithful disciple who would draw on Peter's stories for his Gospel. Luke describes the amazement of those who found Peter standing in front of them and then writes that Peter, who was being sought by Herod's soldiers, went "elsewhere." Where is this "elsewhere"? In all probability, it was already Rome, even if no New Testament sources confirm this directly. There are two indirect confirmations. One is the first letter of Peter, where the apostle says he is writing from the church of the chosen in Babylon; Babylon here, as in Revelation, was a code name for Rome. The other is in Paul's letter to the Romans, where he justifies his absence from Rome by the statement that he did not want to build on someone else's foundation. Arriving in 42, he left for the first time around 46, to return to Jerusalem where, now that Herod Agrippa was dead, he had less cause to fear.

His relationship with Paul
In 48 he participated in the first Council, defending along with Paul the right of converted Gentiles not to submit to circumcision. Relations between the two did not always run smoothly, however, as is shown by the well-known episode in Antioch. Peter, in Paul's stronghold, accepted an invitation to dinner from a group of converted Gentiles. But learning of the arrival from Jerusalem of some emissaries from James (who was the defender of the Jewish Christians) "he began to avoid them and to keep to himself." Paul thought this was a hypocritical attitude, and it is hard not to agree with him. However, we only have his version of the episode, and certainly Peter, who was the more open of the two toward pagans, had good reasons for acting this way without getting himself and the new converts into trouble.
Rome was waiting for him to come back again; the community was growing by leaps and bounds, house after house. He returned there around 57. Certainly he made more than one enemy within the community, if it is true what Clement, the third pope, writes, that because of the jealousy of some he was captured and sentenced to death. This was probably the year 67, the last year of Nero's reign. Peter was crucified, in the Horti Neroniani, upside down at his specific request, because he felt unworthy of dying as his Master had. He was buried a short distance away, on the spot where the altar of the Confessio now stands in St. Peter's Basilica.

Name: Peter, son of John
Place of origin: Bethsaida, Galilee
Identifying traits: Stocky build, beard, probably spoke three languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic) but with a strong accent that indicated his Galilean origins (see the episode of his denial of Christ)
Feast day: June 29, with Saint Paul
Places of special veneration: St. Peter's in Rome; San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, where his remains were probably put for safekeeping during Valerian's persecution in 258; the Church of Quo Vadis, at the beginning of the Appian Way; the Mamertine Prison, where he was held in Rome; San Pietro in Grado, near Pisa at the mouth of the Arno River, where tradition says Peter landed to go to Rome
Information in: the Gospels; the Acts of the Apostles; the Letters of Paul, especially the one to the Galatians; the Letters of Peter (even if these are subject to debate). There are also numerous ancient sources; outstanding among them is the letter to the Corinthians written by Clement, the third Pope, around 80 A.D.

"Rabbi, Where Do You Live?"

BY ANDREA TORNIELLI

"The next day as John stood there again with two of his disciples, Jesus went past, and John looked toward Him and said, 'Look, there is the Lamb of God.' And the two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. Jesus turned around, saw them following and said, 'What do you want?' They answered, 'Rabbi-which means Teacher-'where do you live?' He replied, 'Come and see.' So they went and saw where He lived, and stayed with Him that day. It was about the tenth hour. One of these two… was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter." Thus does John the Evangelist, who that day along with Andrew began to follow the man of Nazareth, describe their first meeting, specifying even the time of day.
According to his story, the fisherman Andrew is the first of the apostles to be called to follow Jesus, and for this reason the Byzantine liturgy calls him "protòkleitos," which means "first called." "But imagine those two there listening to him for some hours and then they had to go home. He greets them and they go back silent… And Andrew goes into his house and puts down his mantle, and his wife says to him, 'Andrew, what is it? You've changed, what's happened to you?' Imagine him bursting into tears as he embraces her… It was him, but he was someone else" (L. Giussani, Time and the Temple). It was Andrew who took his brother Peter to Christ. Meeting his brother Simon, Andrew said, "We have found the Messiah," and led him to where Jesus was. The other Gospels, too, speak of the relationship between Peter and Andrew and of their profession, when they describe the moment of the call of the twelve: "As he was walking by the Lake of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew; they were casting into the lake with their net, for they were fishermen. And He said to them, 'Come after me and I will make you fishers of people.'"

The city of fish
Andrew, like Peter, was originally from Bethsaida, literally, "the city of fish." Destroyed in large part by the Romans during the repression of the Jewish revolt in 67 A.D. and razed definitively to the ground by an earthquake during the night of December 13, 115 A.D., the ancient site of Bethsaida was brought to light a few years ago by the archeologist Bargil Pixel. The hometown of Andrew, Peter, and Philip was not at all a fishing village with a few poor huts, but a place with the legal status of a city. Philip, tetrarch of Galilee and the son of Herod the Great, contributed to opening his territory culturally to the Greek way of thinking. And all three of Jesus' disciples from Bethsaida have Greek names even though they are Jews. The city covered a wide area, and there was almost certainly a small fishing village right at the port, to handle the freshly caught fish. Since 1990 excavations have uncovered important ruins from the time of Christ, some of which demonstrate that there were a number of well-to-do families in Bethsaida. Natives of Bethsaida, Peter and Andrew lived at Capernaum, a village a short distance away, also on the banks of Lake Tiberias. The house is well-built and divided into two: in one part Peter with his wife, children and mother-in-law, in the other Andrew and his family. The fishermen spoken of in the Gospels were not poor; Peter and Andrew surely had more than one boat in association with others of Capernaum, amongst whom were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who will also become disciples of Jesus.
After the narration of his first meeting with Jesus, we find Andrew a part of the group of twelve apostles, listed second by Matthew and Luke, fourth by Mark and in the Acts of the Apostles: a sign of the particular prestige that the "protòkleitos" enjoyed in the early Christian community. He is depicted with a severe, bearded face. He must have been intuitive, attentive to the meaning of the words John the Baptist used to point out the passing of the "Lamb of God," and certainly he was enterprising, if he could ask someone he didn't know and whose eyes he had just met, "Where do you live?"

The multiplication of the loaves
On the occasion of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, it was Andrew who told Jesus that there was a boy who had five barley loaves and two fishes. Finally, the Gospel of John (12:12-22) describes another episode, the last time Jesus went to Jerusalem. Some Greeks who wanted to meet Jesus "approached Philip, who came from Bethsaida in Galilee, and put this request to him, 'Sir, we would like to see Jesus.' Philip went to tell Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together went to tell Jesus." This scene reveals Andrew's special familiarity with Christ, as well as his close friendship with Philip, who was from the same town. The Gospels tell us no more.
Later tradition, however, has handed down information about his apostolate. Andrew preached in Pontus, Bithynia, Scythia, Thrace, and finally in Greece. He was crucified in Patras on a cross saltire, an X-shaped cross, which since then has been called the "St. Andrew's cross." He died under proconsul Aegea, and his death resembles that of his brother Peter in various ways. Andrew's relics were transferred first to Constantinople, at the time of the Emperor Constans, in 356, and during the 13th century to Amalfi; his head was taken to St. Peter's Basilica in 1462 to be preserved near his brother's tomb. On June 23, 1964, Pope Paul VI announced that the relic was being returned to the Metropolitan Bishop of Patras, as a sign of friendship toward the Orthodox Church, which especially venerates St. Andrew. For centuries, in the disputes between Rome and Byzantium concerning the primacy of Peter, the title of "protòkleitos" was used by the Eastern Church to support its claim to autonomy. Andrew's feast day is November 30th, the probable day of his death. Fairly romanticized stories of the apostle's martyrdom can be found in the apocryphal Acts of St. Andrew, a text written between the second and third century, which was widely distributed among the Manicheans

PROFILE

Name: Andrew, son of John
Origin: Bethsaida
Profession: Fisherman
Identifying traits: Bearded, severe, enterprising
Feast day: November 30
Places of special veneration: Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome, St. Andrew (Ayios Andreas) in Patras.
Information in: the Gospels