The
Choosing of
the Twelve
.
by Fulton
J. Sheen
Our
Lord’s great command was: “Follow Me!” By
calling others to Himself, He introduced
the idea that man should have charge over
man. It was a prolongation of the
principle of His Incarnation: He Who is
God would teach and redeem and sanctify
through the human nature which He had
taken from Mary. But He would work also
through other human natures, starting with
those first twelve whom He called to be
His followers. It was not to be the angels
who would administer to men: the
government of the Father would be placed
in the hands of human beings. Such is the
meaning of His apostolic call to the
twelve.
One is struck at once by the gigantic aim
He proposed for His followers, namely, the
moral conquest of the whole world; they
were to be the “light of the world,” the
“salt of the earth,” and the “city that
cannot be hid.” He bade rather
insignificant men to take an almost cosmic
view of their mission, for on them would
He build His Kingdom. These chosen lights
were to cast their rays over the rest of
humanity, in all nations.
In his essay The Twelve Men,
dealing with the British jury system, G.
K. Chesterton wrote, “Whenever our
civilization wants a library to be
catalogued, or a solar system discovered,
or any other trifle of this kind, it uses
up its specialists. But when it wishes
anything done which is really serious, it
collects twelve of the ordinary men
standing around. The same thing was done,
if I remember right, by the Founder of
Christianity.”
It is evident that from the beginning, Our
Blessed Lord intended to prolong His
teaching, and His reign and His very life
“unto the consummation of the world” but
in order to do this He had to call to
Himself a body of men to whom He would
communicate certain powers that He had
brought with Him to earth. This body would
not be a social body such as a club,
united only for the sake of pleasure and
convenience; nor would it be a political
body, held together by common material
interests; it would be truly spiritual,
the cement of which would be charity and
love and the possession of His Spirit. If
the society or Mystical Body Our Lord
wanted to found was to have continuity, it
would need a head and members. If it was a
vineyard, as He declared in one of His
parables, it would need laborers; if it
was a net, it would need fishermen; if it
was a field, it would need sowers and
reapers; if it was a herd, or a flock, it
would need shepherds.
In these days he
went out to the mountain to pray; and
all night he continued in prayer to God.
And when it was day, he called his
disciples, and chose from them twelve,
whom he named apostles; Simon, whom he
named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and
James and John, and Philip, and
Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas,
and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon
who was called the Zealot, and Judas the
son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who
became a traitor.
Luke 6:12-16
The
night before the choice He spent praying
on the mountainside that they who were in
the heart of the Father would also be in
His own. When morning broke, He came down
to where His disciples were gathered and,
man by man, called those whom He had
chosen. Of Peter the most is known. Peter
is mentioned 195 times; the rest of the
Apostles only 130 times. The one mentioned
next in frequency to Peter is John, to
whom there are 29 references. Peter’s
original name was Simon, but it was
changed by Our Blessed Lord to Cephas.
When he was brought to Our Blessed Lord,
Jesus looked at
him, and said, "So you are Simon the son
of John? You shall be called Cephas"
(which means Peter).
John 1:42
The
word Cephas meant “rock”. We do not get
the full flavor of it in English, because
Peter, the proper name, is not the same as
our word “rock.” The words were identical
in the Aramaic which Our Blessed Lord
spoke, just as they are in French, where
the proper name Pierre is the same as
pierre, or rock. In Scripture, whenever
God changed the name of a man, it was to
raise him to a higher dignity and role in
the community to which he belonged. Our
Lord might have been saying to Peter, “you
are impulsive and fickle and unreliable,
but one day all this will be changed; you
will be called by a name that no one would
dare give you now—Rock Man.” Whenever he
is called “Simon” in the Gospels, it is a
reminder of the Apostle’s uninspired and
unregenerate humanity; for example, when
he was sleeping in the garden, Our Blessed
Lord addressed him:
Simon, are you
asleep?
Mark 14:37
Peter had by nature great qualities of
leadership. For example, after the
Resurrection when he said, “I am going
fishing,” the other Apostles followed
suit. His moral courage was manifested
when he left his business and his home for
the Master; that same courage, expressed
impetuously, made him smite off the ear of
Malchus when the leaders came to arrest
Our Lord. He was boastful too, for he
swore that though others would betray the
Master, he would not. He had a deep sense
of sin, and he begged the Lord to depart
from him because of his unworthiness. His
very faults endear him. He was deeply
attached to his Divine Master. When other
disciples left, he maintained there was no
one else to whom they could go. He had
courage, for he left his wife and his
business to follow Our Lord.
To the credit of all mothers-in-law, it
must be said that Peter showed no regret
when Our Lord cured her of a serious
illness. He was impulsive to an extreme
degree, guided more by feeling than by
reason. He wanted to walk on the waters
and, given the power, became frightened
and screamed in fear—he a man of the sea.
He was an emphatic man, swinging swords,
cursing, protesting against the Savior
washing his feet; though named head of the
Church, he had none of the ambition of
James and John. But through the power of
his Divine Master this impetuous man, as
fluid as water, was turned into the rock
on which Christ built His Church.
The Divine Savior constantly linked
Himself verbally with His Heavenly Father;
but the only human being He ever united
with Himself and spoke of Himself and that
one as “we,” was Peter. From that day on,
Peter and his successors have always used
“we” to indicate the unity between the
invisible Head of the Church and its
visible head. But this same Peter, who is
always tempting Our Lord from the Cross,
proves to be a rock of fidelity, for later
on in his life the constant theme of his
letters was the Cross of Christ.
But rejoice in
so far as you share Christ’s sufferings,
that you may also rejoice and be glad
when his glory is revealed.
1 Peter 4:13
Andrew, the brother of Peter, is referred
to eight times in the New Testament. After
being called from his nets and his boats
to be a “fisher of men” along with his
brother Peter, Andrew is seen next on the
occasion of the feeding of the five
thousand, telling Our Lord that there was
a boy present with five loaves and two
fishes. Toward the end of the public
ministry, Andrew is met with again when
some Gentiles, probably Greeks, came to
Philip asking to see Our Lord. Philip then
consulted Andrew and they both came to the
Lord. At the very first meeting of Andrew
and Our Blessed Lord, Jesus asked him:
What do you
seek?
John 1:38
Andrew had been a friend of John the
Baptist. When he met Our Lord, to whom
John the Baptist had pointed, he
immediately went and told Peter that he
had found the Messias. Andrew is always
spoken of as Simon Peter’s brother. He was
an “introducer” because he brought his
brother Peter to Our Lord; he introduced
the lad with the barley loaves and fishes
to Our Lord; and finally with Philip, came
to introduce the Greeks to Our Lord. When
it is a question of dispensing some
benefits of the Lord or bringing others to
the Lord, Philip and Andrew are mentioned
together. Andrew was rather silent, being
overshadowed by his brother Peter, but
apparently he was never jealous. There was
room for envy when Peter, James, and John
were selected on three occasions for
intimacy with the Divine Master, but he
accepted his humble place; sufficient it
was to him to have found the Christ.
Like Peter and Andrew, James and John were
brothers and fishermen. They worked
together for their father Zebedee. Their
mother Salome was apparently not lacking
in ambition; for it was she who, one day,
thinking that the Kingdom that Our Blessed
Lord had come to establish would be
without a Cross, asked that her two sons
be picked to sit at the left and right
side of Our Lord in His Kingdom. To her
credit, however, it must be added that we
find her again on Calvary, at the foot of
the Cross. Our Blessed Lord gave her sons
a nickname—Boanerges or “sons of thunder.”
This happened when the Samaritans refused
to receive Our Blessed Lord because He had
set His Face towards Jerusalem and His
death. The two Apostles, discovering this,
manifested their intolerance to Our Lord:
Lord, wouldst Thou have us bid fire come
down from Heaven, And consume them? But He
turned and rebuked them,
And when his
disciples James and John saw it, they
said, "Lord, do you want us to bid fire
come down from heaven and consume them?"
But he turned and rebuked them. And they
went on to another village. As they were
going along the road, a man said to him,
"I will follow you wherever you go." And
Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes,
and birds of the air have nests; but the
Son of man has nowhere to lay his head."
Luke 9:54–58
The
two “sons of thunder” did not fail to
drink deeply of the chalice of suffering.
John was later plunged in boiling oil,
which he survived only through a miracle.
James was the first of all of the Apostles
to suffer martyrdom for Christ. John
described himself as “the disciple whom
Jesus loved,” and to him was accorded the
guardianship of the mother of Our Lord
after the Crucifixion. John was known to
the High Priest probably because of his
cultural refinement which justified his
name, which in the original Hebrew means
“favored of God.” His Gospel revealed him
truly as an eagle who soared to heaven to
understand the mysteries of the Word. No
one better understood the heart of Christ;
no one penetrated more deeply into the
significance of His words. He too was the
only one of the Apostles to be found at
the foot of Christ; he is the one who
tells us that “Jesus wept,” and he gives
the New Testament definition of God as
“Love.” James his brother, who is called
“the Greater” belonged, together with
Peter and John, to that “special
committee” which witnessed the
Transfiguration, the raising of the
daughter of Jairus from the dead, and the
agony of Gethsemane.
The Apostle Philip came from Bethsaida and
was a fellow-townsman of Andrew and Peter.
Philip was the curious enquirer; and his
enquiry was crowned by the joy of
discovery when he found Christ.
Philip found
Nathanael, and said to him, "We have
found him of whom Moses in the law and
also the prophets wrote, Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nathanael
said to him, "Can anything good come out
of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come
and see."
John 1:45-46
Philip
declined all controversy with a man who
was so prejudiced as to believe that a
prophet could not come out of a despised
village. Philip is not met again until the
multiplication of the loaves and the
fishes, and again he was enquiring:
Two hundred
silver pieces would not buy enough
bread For them, even to give each a
little. John 6:7
Philip made a last enquiry on the night of
the Last Supper, when he asked Our Lord to
show him the Father. Philip brought
Bartholomew, or Nathanael as he was also
called, to Our Blessed Lord. As soon as He
saw him, Our Divine Savior read his soul
and described him as follows:
Jesus saw
Nathanael coming to him, and said of
him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in
whom is no guile!" Nathanael said to
him, "How do you know me?" Jesus
answered him, "Before Philip called you,
when you were under the fig tree, I saw
you."
John
1:47,48
Then
Nathanael answered Him:
Nathanael
answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of
God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus
answered him, "Because I said to you, I
saw you under the fig tree, do you
believe? You shall see greater things
than these." And he said to him, "Truly,
truly, I say to you, you will see heaven
opened, and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the Son of man."
John 1:49-51
When
Our Lord told him that He had seen him
under a fig-tree, Bartholomew was willing
immediately to make the affirmation that
Christ was the Son of God. His first
contact with Our Lord had already lighted
the lamp of faith within him, but Our Lord
quickly assured him that there would be
greater experiences in store; in
particular, the great vision which had
come to Jacob would be realized in Him.
Our Lord said that Nathanael belonged to
the true Israel. Israel was the name given
to Jacob. He, however, was very shrewd,
and full of guile. Nathanael is
characterized as a true Israelite, or one
without guile. A sudden transition from
the plural to the singular happens when
Our Lord says: “You will see heaven
opening” Jacob had seen the heavens opened
and angels ascending and descending on the
ladder, bringing the things of man to God
and the things of God to men. Jesus was
now telling Nathanael that he would see
even greater things. The implication was
that He Himself would henceforth be the
Mediator between heaven and earth, God and
man; in Him, all the traffic between time
and eternity would meet as at a crossroad.
This prophecy of Our Lord to Bartholomew
shows that the Incarnation of the Son of
God would be the basis of communion
between man and God. Nathanael had called
Him the “Son of God” Our Lord called
Himself the “Son of Man”: “Son of God”
because He is eternally Divine; “Son of
Man” because He is related humbly to all
humanity. This title, used in close
relationship with another title that had
been given to Our Lord, namely, the “King
of Israel,” still carried with it a
Messianic meaning; but it took it out of
the limited context of one people and one
race, into the sphere of universal
humanity.
Of Matthew or Levi, the publican, there is
a record of his vocation and how he
responded to it. The great and
imperishable glory of Matthew is his
Gospel. Matthew was a publican under the
government of Herod, a vassal of Rome.
A publican was one who sold out his own
people and collected taxes for the
invader, retaining for himself a fairly
large percentage. Very understandably,
because a publican was a kind of Quisling,
he was held in contempt by his fellow men;
yet he knew at the same time that he had
the power and legal authority of the Roman
government behind him. The particular
place where we first meet Matthew is at
the head of the lake, near Capharnaum
where he was gathering in the taxes. His
calling demanded that he should be a
careful recorder of the accounts. His
submission to the Savior was immediate.
The Gospel relates:
As Jesus passed
on from there, he saw a man called
Matthew sitting at the tax office; and
he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose
and followed him.
Matthew 9:9
He
who had been wealthy would now have
nothing to look forward to but poverty and
persecution; and yet, he accepted this
condition at the first summons. “Come,”
says the Savior to a despised man, and he
follows immediately. His response was all
the more remarkable because he had been
immersed in a trade which attracted mostly
the unscrupulous and the unethical. It was
bad enough that the tribute of homage from
Israel should be collected by a Roman, but
for it to be collected by a Jew was to
make him one of the most despised of men.
And yet, this Quisling who had forfeited
all love of country, and who had
completely suffocated the virtue of
patriotism in his lust for gain, ended by
becoming one of the most patriotic of his
own people. The Gospel which he wrote
might be described as the gospel of
patriotism. A hundred times in his Gospel,
he goes back into the history of the past,
quoting from Isaias, Jeremias, Micheas,
David, Daniel and all the prophets; after
piling them one upon the other in a great
cumulative argument, he says to his people
in effect: “This is the glory of Israel,
this is our hope, we have begotten the Son
of the Living God; we have given to the
world the Messias.” His country, which had
yesterday meant nothing at all to him,
became in his Gospel of the highest
importance. He was declaring himself a son
of Israel, ready to lavish on her all his
praise. As men love God, they will also
love their country.
Thomas was the pessimist of the Apostles,
and probably his pessimism had something
to do with his skepticism. When Our Lord
tried to console His Apostles, on the
night of the Last Supper by assuring them
that He would prepare the way for them in
heaven, Thomas responded by saying that he
wanted to believe but could not. Later on,
when the news was brought to Our Lord that
Lazarus was dead:
Thomas, called
the Twin, said to his fellow disciples,
"Let us also go, that we may die with
him."
John 11:16
Thomas was called Didymus, which is merely
the Greek translation of a Hebrew name and
means “twin” Thomas was a twin in another
sense, for in him lived side-by-side the
twins of unbelief and faith, each
contending for mastery. There was faith,
because he believed it was better to die
with the Lord than to forsake Him; there
was unbelief, for he could not help
believing that death would be the end of
whatever work the Lord had a mind to
accomplish.
Chrysostom says of him that while he would
hardly venture to go with Jesus as far as
the neighboring town of Bethany, Thomas
would travel without Him after Pentecost,
to farthest India to implant the Faith;
even to this day, the faithful in India
still call themselves “St. Thomas
Christians.”
Two of the Apostles were relatives of Our
Lord, namely, James and Jude. They are
called “brethren” of Our Lord, but in
Aramaic and Hebrew this word often means
cousins or distant relatives. We know that
Mary had no other children but Jesus. The
phrase “my dear brethren,” as used so
often in the pulpit, does not imply that
all the members of the congregation have
the same mother. Scripture often uses
“brethren” in the wide sense. For example,
Lot is called the “brother” of Abraham,
whereas he was actually his nephew; Laban
is called the “brother” of Jacob, but he
was his uncle. The sons of Oziel and
Aaron, the sons of Cis and the daughters
of Eleazar are called “brothers,” but they
were cousins. So it is with the “brethren”
of Our Lord. These two Apostles, James the
Less and Jude, were probably the sons of
Cleophas, who was married to Our Lady’s
sister.
Jude had three names. Having the same name
as Judas the traitor, he is always
described negatively as “not the
Iscariot.” The night of the Last Supper,
he questioned Our Lord about the Holy
Spirit, or how He would be invisible and
yet manifest Himself after His
Resurrection. There had always been
lurking in the minds of many of the
Apostles a desire to see some great
flashing Messianic glory that would open
blind eyes and capture every intelligence.
Judas (not
Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it
that you will manifest yourself to us,
and not to the world?"
John 14:22
The
answer of Our Lord to Jude was that when
our responsive love melts into obedience,
then God makes His dwelling within us.
Later on, Jude, sometimes called Thaddeus,
wrote an Epistle beginning with words
which reflected the answer he received on
Holy Thursday night:
Jude, a servant
of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To
those who are called, beloved in God the
Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May
mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to
you.
Jude 1:1-2
Another Apostle was James the Just, also
called James the Less, to distinguish him
from the son of Zebedee. We know he had a
good mother for she was one of the women
who stood at the foot of the Cross. Like
his brother Jude he wrote an Epistle which
was addressed to the twelve tribes of the
dispersion, that is, to the Jewish
Christians who were scattered throughout
the Roman world. It began:
James, a servant
of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To
the twelve tribes in the Dispersion:
Greeting.
James 1:1
James who like all the other Apostles
failed to understand the Cross when Our
Lord foretold it, afterward came like the
others to make the Cross the condition of
glory.
Count it all
joy, my brethren, when you meet various
trials... Blessed is the man who endures
trial, for when he has stood the test he
will receive the crown of life which God
has promised to those who love him.
James 1:2, 12
Simon the Zealot is one of the twelve
Apostles about whom we know the least. His
Aramaic name meaning “Zealot” suggests
that he was a partisan to a sect which
would use violence to overthrow the
foreign yoke. This name had been given to
him before his conversion. He belonged to
a band of patriots who were so zealous for
the overthrow of Roman rule that they
revolted against Caesar. Perhaps the Lord
chose him because of his wholehearted
enthusiasm for a cause; but a Niagara of
purification would be needed before he
would understand the Kingdom in terms of a
Cross instead of a sword. Imagine Simon
the Zealot, an Apostle with Matthew the
publican! One was an extreme nationalist,
while the other was by profession
virtually a traitor to his own people. And
yet both were made one by Christ, and
later on they would both be martyrs for
His Kingdom. The twelfth Apostle was
Judas, “the son of perdition,” who will be
treated later.
The number twelve is symbolic. The Book of
the Apocalypse speaks of the twelve
foundations of the Church. There were
twelve patriarchs in the Old Testament,
and also twelve tribes in Israel; there
were twelve spies who explored the
promised land; there were twelve stones on
the breast of the High Priest; when Judas
failed, a twelfth Apostle had to be named.
The Apostles are most often referred to in
the Gospels as “the twelve,” that title
being attributed to them thirty-two times.
In choosing these twelve, it was evident
that Our Lord was preparing them for a
work after His Ascension; that the Kingdom
He came to found was not only invisible
but visible; not only Divine but human.
But they had so much to learn before they
could be the twelve gates of the Kingdom
of God. Their first lesson would be the
Beatitudes.
[This article is
excerpted from Life in Christ,
chapter 10, Copyright 1958 by Fulton
Sheen, and first published in Great
Britain 1959 for Peter Davies Ltd by The
Windmill Press Ltd, Kingswood, Surrey.]
Archbishop Fulton
J. Sheen (1895-1979) was an American theologian
and bishop, first in New York City and then in
Rochester, New York. He became well-known for
his preaching, especially on television and
radio. He hosted the night-time radio
program The Catholic Hour for
twenty years (1930–1950) before moving to
television and presenting a weekly program
called, Life Is Worth Living. The
show ran from 1951 until 1957, drawing as many
as 30 million people on a weekly basis. He wrote
73 books and numerous articles and columns.
Mother Theresa of Calcutta always kept a copy of
Sheen’s book, Life of Christ, with
her wherever she traveled for daily reflection
and meditation.
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illustration: The Calling of Matthew,
painting by Caravaggio
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