The Twelve Apostles

St. Luke’s Gospel, chapter 6, verses 12-15 : 
“Then he went out to the mountain to pray, spending the night in communion with God. At daybreak he called his disciples and selected twelve of them to be his apostles : Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who turned traitor.”

Acts of Apostles, Chapter 2, verses 16-17; 21-22, 26.
“Peter stood up and said ‘.Judas, the one who guided those who arrested Jesus. He was one of our number and he had been given a share in this ministry of ours. It is fitting therefore, that one of those who was of our company while the Lord Jesus moved among us from the baptism of John until the day he was taken from us, should be named as witness with us to his resurrection.’ … the choice fell to Matthias who was added to the eleven apostles.”

Acts of the Apostles, chapter 6, verses 1-6.
The Need of Assistants. (deacons). In those days, as the number of disci¬ples grew, :the ones who spoke Greek complained that their wid¬ows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food, as com¬pared with,; the widows of those who spoke Hebrew. The Twelve assembled the community of the disciples and said, "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. Look around among your own number, brothers, for seven men acknowledged to be deeply spiritual and prudent, and we shall appoint them to this task. This will permit us to concentrate on prayer and the ministry of the word." The proposal was unani¬mously accepted by the community. Following this they selected Ste¬phen, a man filled with faith and the Holy Spirit; Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus of, Antioch, who had been a convert to Judaism. They pre¬sented these men to\the apostles, who first prayed over them and then imposed hands on them.

The Evangelists are the writers of the four Gospels : Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Biographies

January 25: The Conversion of Saint Paul (Saul of Tarsus)
Today we celebrate an event of great consequ¬ence for the life of the Church: the conversion of St. Paul. His conversion was sudden and dramatic: from being a persecutor of the Church he is transformed into an apostle of Christ. This was a turning point in the life of the primitive Christian community. Let us thank God for the wonders of his grace which can change even the hardest of hearts.

May 3, Saints Philip and James, Apostles
Philip the Apostle came from the town of Beth¬saida. A tradition says that he preached the Gos¬pel in Phrygia in Asia Minor. The Apostle James (the Less), son of Alphaeus, has tradition¬ally been identified with James the brother of the Lord who became head of the Church in Jerusalem and was later martyred there. But this identification is not certain.

May 14, Saint Matthias, Apostle
After Christ's ascension Matthias was chosen by lot to fill the place of Judas among the Apostles. His election is narrated in the Acts of the Apos¬tles and outside this we hear no more about him in the New Testament. Narratives concerning the saint in later literature are confused and unreliable.

June 11: Saint Barnabas, Apostle
Barnabas was a Jewish levite from Cyprus. In the early community he was noted for his generosity and for his special charism for en¬couraging Christians to perseverance. (His name was even taken to mean 'son of consola¬tion'; Acts 4: 34). He worked with Paul in the gentile mission and is praised by him in the first letter to the Corinthians. (9;6)

June 29: Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
In the Gospels St. Peter stands out as the member of the twelve apostles who most fre¬quently took the initiative while they were with Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles portray him as the undisputed leader of the early Church, un¬dergoing enormous hardships and fearlessly fac¬ing persecution for the sake of Christ. He was a man of action, sometimes impetuous, an ardent lover of Christ. He spent his last years in Rome, where tradition states he was martyred during the persecutions of Nero, in 64 or 65.
St. Paul, who was well versed in rabbinical learning, at first zealously persecuted the Christians until, on his way to Damascus to arrest certain Christians, he had a vision of Christ which instantaneously changed his entire life. After three years in solitary retirement in the desert of Arabia, he plunged into a life of intense missionary activity, during which he was several times beaten up and imprisoned by the authorities. Tradition says he was martyred in Rome, about the year 67. Tertullian adds that he was beheaded. It has been said that he is the most powerful personality in the history of the Church. His life was dominated by an ardent love of Christ, who was at the centre of his life and preaching. His famous hymn to charity (1 Cor. 13) is an unconscious self-portrait.

July 3: Saint Thomas, Apostle
We honour St. Thomas as one of the twelve Apostles. His character is interesting and rather puzzling. It was he who rallied the other Apostles around the Master on the final journey to Jerusalem. But he was so slow to understand and to believe. Calvary must have appeared to be the end of all his hopes. Not present when the Lord appeared to the other Apostles after his Resurrection, Thomas was not prepared to accept their testimony. For him seeing was believing, and in this he is a type of modern man-prepared to accept only what can be perceived by the senses, unsure of whatever lies beyond the world of physical experience. But then he, too, is favoured by an apparition of the Risen Lord. He is gently reproached for his lack of faith, and from being 'doubting Thomas' he becomes believing Thomas who exclaims 'My Lord and my God'.

July 25: Saint James, Apostle
St. James, like his brother St. John, was a fisherman when called by the Lord to become a 'fisher of men'. (He was older than the other apostle James, which is why he is called 'the Greater'). With his brother John and St. Peter he was on terms of special intimacy with the Master: the three are mentioned, for example, as privileged witnesses to Christ's transfiguration on Mount Tabor as well as to his agony in Gethsemeni. St. James was the first of the apostles to be martyred.

August 24: Saint Bartholomew, Apostle
We know little about this Apostle, save that he was numbered among the Twelve. If, as seems likely, he is identical with the Nathanael of the gospel, then he was a native of Cana and was introduced to Our Lord by St. Philip. According to legend, he preached the Gospel in India and there suffered martyrdom. There is no real foundation for this belief. What is certain is that he was one of the chosen companions of Christ and so had a special claim on our veneration and devotion.

September 21; Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
St. Matthew, before his call by the Lord, belonged to that despised class in Jewish society-the tax-collectors. But he was called to be an apostle, and his response to that call was not less generous than that of the other chosen disciples. He left everything to follow Christ. He is the author of one of the four gospels. In it he has left us a very full account of the life and teaching of Jesus. In reading it we are made aware that Jesus is indeed the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Little is known about St. Matthew's life after Our Lord's Resurrection, but according to one tradition he was martyred in Ethiopia.

October 28: Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles
St. Simon, one of the twelve, is called by Matthew and Mark the Cananaean and by Luke the Zealot. Nothing certain is known of his personal history. 
St. Jude is generally identified in the West with 'Jude, the brother of James'. The two apostles' feasts have always been celebrated together in the West, since the apocryphal 'Passion of Simon and Jude' describes them as having been martyred together in Persia.

November 30: Saint Andrew, Apostle
St. Andrew, like his brother Peter, was a fisherman when called by the Lord to become a 'fisher of men'. He was the close companion of Christ during the Lord's earthly ministry. After Pentecost he preached the gospel not only in Palestine but also in more distant territories. According to tradition he was martyred by crucifixion.

December 27: Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist
John, like his brother James, was a fisherman when Our Lord called him. He is referred to in the gospels as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' and is believed to have been the youngest of the apostles. He was the only one of the twelve who stood by the cross, with Mary the mother of Jesus. St. John lived to a great age: he suffered persecution and exile but was not actually martyred. In the epistles that bear his name and the Gospel he is above all else a herald of the new life of grace brought to men by Christ.

Other important characters of the New Testament

January 26: Saints Timothy and Titus
Timothy, a native of Lystra in Asia Minor, was the son of a non-Jewish father and of a Jewish mother. He was converted to Christianity by St. Paul, whose companion and helper he became. Two of the New Testament epistles were addressed to him. He is regarded in tradition as the first bishop of Ephesus. 
Titus was converted from paganism by St. Paul, whose helper he became. Paul was very devoted to him. He sent him to Crete to organize the Church there and Titus is venerated as the first bishop of the Cretan city of Gortyna. One of the New Testament epistles was addressed to him.

April 25: Saint Mark, Evangelist
St. Mark is one of the four evangelists. (The mention of a young man in Mk. 14: 51 during the arrest of Jesus is perhaps a reference to himself). He accompanied St. Paul during his first missionary journey. According to tradition, he was closely associated with St. Peter in Rome and it was from St. Peter that he derived his Gospel. The Gospel according to St. Mark, though the shortest of all four, is full of interesting details about the life of Our Lord.

June 24: Birth of John the Baptist
John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth, was a cousin of Our Lady. His father was Zachariah, a priest of the Temple. John appeared on the banks of the Jordan about the year A.D. 27, preaching repentance and the coming of the kingdom. He recognized Jesus as the Messiah and accepted the fact that his own role must henceforth decline. He was beheaded by Herod Antipas, whom he had denounced for his marriage to Herodias.

July 29: Saint Martha
Among our Lord's closest friends, at whose home he frequently called on his journeys to Jerusalem, were the two sisters Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Today is St. Martha's feastday. She was one of those generous, conscientious, hardworking people who tend to get vexed and bothered when things do not go right. But she was also a woman of deep faith with unbounded trust in the Lord's divine power.

July 22: Saint Mary Magdalene
There has in the past been some confusion as to the identity of this Mary. It is now accepted that she is not to be identified either with Mary, the repentant sinner who washed Our Lord's feet with her tears, nor with Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. According to St. Luke she was one of those good women who followed Jesus on his missionary journeys offering him their services. St. John names her as one of the three women who stood by the Cross. We know very little about her life, but her love for Christ, personal and intense, is amply attested in the gospels.

October 18: Saint Luke, Evangelist
According to tradition, St. Luke is author of the third gospel and of Acts. He would appear to have been a gentile; he accompanied St. Paul on his second missionary journey from Troas to Philippi and on the third from Philippi to Jerusalem and went with him to Rome, where he remained while Paul was in prison. He seems to have been one of the first members of the Christian community at Antioch. According to tradition Luke was unmarried and died at the age of 84. He is the patron of doctors.

December 26: Saint Stephen, Proto-martyr
Stephen was the first martyr to shed his blood for Christ. He was stoned to death for his testimony to the faith. His heroic fortitude and spirit of Christian forgiveness are a lesson for all of us. It is noteworthy that one of the witnesses to his death was Saul, the future apostle Paul.