Episode 30 – Acts of St Andrew
It’s St Andrews Day, So i thought maybe I could talk about him and make you listen.
You can subscribe to Permanently Moved in itunes: permanentlymoved.online/itunes or search in all your favourite podcatchers.
Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo
Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️
Acts of St Andrew
It’s St Andrew’s Day.
He’s a saint that has always been kind to me.
I was baptised in his church, the family parish back on the chalk, and now I live on his square in southwest London. We hear the bells from the bell tower, and he’s just always been around. So if you don’t know his story, in addition to being the first to follow Jesus, Andrew was a demon hunter. After the ascension, the apostles dispersed to preach in various countries and towns.
It was on the road to Nicaea where one of Saint Andrew’s most famous acts took place. There were seven devils living amongst the tombs by the wayside. At noon, they would stone passers by, and they had killed many people. When Andrew arrived, the whole city came out to meet him with olive branches, crying, Our salvation is in thee, O man of God.
And when they had told him about the spirits in the tombs, Andrew said, “If you believe in Christ, you shall be freed.” They cried, “we will”, and he thanked God and commanded the demons to appear. The seven beasts came in the form of dogs, and he said to them, “These are your enemies, and if you profess your belief, I can drive them out in Jesus name.”
“We will do so, the people cried out. We believe in Jesus Christ, whom thou preachest is the Son of God. And then Andrew commanded the demons go into the dry and barren places and hurt no man till the last day.” They roared and vanished. The apostle baptized the people and made Callistus the bishop and set about extending the church.
Later, at the gate of Nicomedia, Andrew met a dead man born on a bier. Which is a kind of coffin, cart, with wheels. The man’s body was led by his older father and mother, and they said to Andrew, he was alone in his chamber, and seven dogs rushed on him, and killed him. Andrew had said, “this is an ambush of the demons that I banished from Nicaea”.
The death of this child then being his responsibility, Andrew prayed, Let the spirit of this lad return. And the faithful responded, Amen. Andrew bade the lad rise, and so he rose from the dead, and all realized great is the God of Andrew.
Demons Possessing Beautiful Women in Baths.
The Apostolic Romance, ‘The Acts of Andrew’, is a rip roaring book that has several editions.
And in the middle section, like a modern Marvel movie, there is a crossover story with Jon. That includes even more resurrections by Andrew. And as we slide into an alternate take view on the acts of Jon, they team up together. And Jon gives a long speech and afterwards heals many women in the city.
John gives some more long speeches that are quite moralistic, and their content is somewhat removed from the message of the New Testament. But John also raises more people from the dead, but also wags his finger at Andrew, and stresses on the fact that spiritual resurrection is more important than the revival of the body.
There’s more wild stories of healing the blind and the sick, and the goddess Diana appears to a pregnant woman who is married to a murderer, and says to her that she doesn’t deal with trivial prayers, and that she should go to Andrew. Andrew apparently says the child will be born dead.
In the Gnostic Manichaean version of the Acts of St Andrew, of which there are only fragments, mainly surviving from detractors that considered it a heresy, But there is the general gist that visible things do not proceed from their own nature, but from that man who of his own will has become worse through seduction.
Whilst obscure is definitely the kind of thing that would appeal to those who thought of material things and phenomena as evil. His martyrdom is pieced together from several fragments and differing texts. But he is said to have been martyred by crucifixion at the city of Petraeus. Early texts describe Andrew as being bound, not nailed, to a Latin cross, the kind that Jesus would have been crucified on.
Yet tradition has developed that Andrew has been crucified on a cross of the form of the Crus de Custa. Or, X shaped cross, now commonly known as the St Andrew’s cross. Supposedly, at his own request, as he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified on the same type of cross that Jesus had been. The iconography of the martyrdom of Andrew, on the X shaped cross, does not appear to have been standardized until the later Middle Ages.
His prayer chaplet has 15 beads, and today is the day that you can begin Advent with his Christmas novena.
Permanently Moved
Permanently Moved (dot) Online is a quarterly audio personal podcast, written, recorded and edited by by @thejaymo
Leave a Reply