The Twelve Apostles and Their Missions

The word apostle means "one who is sent." From among his many disciples Christ chose twelve to be with him and to be sent out: Peter and his brother Andrew; James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Philip; Bartholomew (also called Nathanael); Thomas; Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus; Thaddaeus (also called Jude); Simon the Zealot; and Judas Iscariot. After Judas betrayed Christ and was lost, the eleven chose Matthias by lot to complete the Twelve (Acts 1:26).

The number twelve was deliberate — an echo of the twelve tribes of Israel, marking the apostles as the foundation of a renewed people of God. Alongside the Twelve, the Church honors Paul, who though not one of the original band met the risen Christ and labored as the "apostle to the Gentiles," as an apostle in the fullest sense. Christ had also sent out Seventy others on mission — among them, by tradition, the evangelists Mark and Luke — who carried the Gospel further still.

The Book of Acts follows Peter and then Paul, and falls silent about most of the others. What the Church remembers of the rest comes from tradition gathered by early historians such as Eusebius of Caesarea, and the level of certainty varies a great deal from apostle to apostle. The tradition should be received with the care it deserves — honoring the apostles' labors without claiming a precision the sources cannot give.

By tradition Peter preached among the scattered Jewish communities of Asia Minor and ended his life in Rome, crucified — at his own request, the tradition says, head downward, unwilling to die exactly as his Lord had. Paul preached from Jerusalem across Asia Minor and Greece to Rome, where he was beheaded under Nero. Andrew, called the First-Called because he followed Christ before his brother Peter, preached around the Black Sea and in Greece; the tradition connects him with the founding of the church at Byzantium, which is why the see of Constantinople honors him as its apostle, and he was martyred at Patras on an X-shaped cross.

John, the beloved disciple, is remembered at Ephesus and in exile on the island of Patmos, and is said to have lived to great old age. James the son of Zebedee was the first of the Twelve to be martyred, beheaded by Herod Agrippa around the year 44 (Acts 12:2). Tradition holds that Thomas traveled farthest of all, to India, where the "Saint Thomas Christians" of the Malabar Coast still trace their origin to him. More faintly, the tradition remembers Bartholomew and Thaddaeus as apostles of Armenia, Matthew in Ethiopia, Philip at Hierapolis in Asia Minor, and Matthias in the lands by the Black Sea — accounts whose historical evidence is thin and which the Church therefore holds with humility.

The ancient centers of the Church treasured their apostolic origins. Antioch and Rome looked to Peter, Rome to Paul as well, and Alexandria to the evangelist Mark. Whole national churches remember an apostle as their father: the Armenian Church looks to Bartholomew and Thaddaeus, the Thomas Christians of India to Thomas, and the Church of Constantinople to Andrew the First-Called.

This is apostolic succession made visible on the map. The faith did not fall from the sky; it was carried, church by church and hand to hand, by those who had seen and touched the risen Christ, and by the men they ordained after them. To trace a church's line back to an apostle is to say that its bishops stand in an unbroken chain reaching to the upper room — the same faith, the same Gospel, entrusted "unto all nations" as Christ commanded.