"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." — Matthew 4:19
"FOLLOW ME"
Two words. No argument, no programme, no explanation of what will be required or where it will lead. The entire call of the first disciples is contained in two words — and two words that ask not for a decision but for a movement: follow, present imperative, ongoing action. Not believe this or agree with that or perform these obligations. Follow me. Come after me. Walk where I walk. Go where I go.
The simplicity of the call is itself a theological statement. Jesus does not recruit followers with credentials, salaries, or promises of success. He calls with authority — and the authority of the call is sufficient. When Simon and Andrew hear it, "immediately they left their nets and followed him" (Matthew 4:20). When James and John hear it, "immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him" (Matthew 4:22). The word immediately — euthys in Greek, one of Mark's characteristic words, used over forty times in his Gospel — captures the quality of genuine divine calling: it does not deliberate, it does not negotiate, it does not wait for convenient circumstances. It responds.
THE CHOICE: HE CHOSE THEM
Before examining each of the Twelve, one truth must be established that governs everything else: Jesus chose them. They did not choose Him.
"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide." — John 15:16
In the religious world of first-century Judaism, a young man who wished to become a disciple went to find a rabbi whose teaching he admired and asked to be accepted as a student. The initiative lay with the disciple; the rabbi judged whether the candidate was worthy. Jesus reverses the entire pattern. He goes to find them. He comes to the lake where they are fishing. He passes by the tax booth where Matthew sits. He does not wait for them to come to Him; He comes to them in the midst of their ordinary lives and calls them out of those lives into His.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Gospel of John (77.1): "He did not call those who had a reputation for wisdom, or the rich, or the nobly born, but poor men, men of humble trade, that all the world might know that the grace of God was the source of everything." The Twelve are not the most impressive candidates available. They are fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, men of Galilee whose accent marked them as provincials in Jerusalem. They are chosen not because of what they are but because of what they will become — and what they will become is entirely the work of the one who calls them.
THE LAKE OF GALILEE: THE FIRST FOUR
"While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.' Immediately they left their nets and followed him." — Matthew 4:18–20
Simon Peter — the most prominent of all the Apostles, the one whose name heads every list, the one to whom Jesus will give the keys of the Kingdom and the charge to feed His sheep. His original name is Simon, son of John (John 1:42); Jesus renames him KΔphas in Aramaic, Petros in Greek — the Rock. The name is prophetic: Simon is anything but a rock at the time of his calling. He is impulsive, unreliable, capable of both great declarations of faith and spectacular failures of nerve. He will walk on water and sink. He will confess Christ as the Son of God and, moments later, try to prevent Him from going to the Cross. He will promise to die rather than deny and deny three times before dawn. And he will be the first Apostle to whom the Risen Lord appears, the one who preaches at Pentecost, the one who shepherds the early Church, the one who dies crucified upside down in Rome, in the city whose bishop's successor sits on the Chair of Peter to this day.
The Rock is not made of rock when Jesus names him. He becomes rock through the grace that the name already carries — the prophetic name given in advance of the reality it will create.
Andrew, Peter's brother — the first called, though not the first in prominence. John's Gospel records that Andrew was originally a disciple of John the Baptist, and when he heard the Baptist declare "Behold, the Lamb of God" (John 1:36), he followed Jesus, spent a day with Him, and then went to find his brother: "We have found the Messiah" (John 1:41). Andrew is the one who brings Peter to Jesus — and in that single act of fraternal witness, he becomes the model of every apostolic invitation: come and see. He will later bring the boy with five loaves and two fish to Jesus at the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:8–9), and he will bring certain Greeks who wish to see Jesus to Philip (John 12:22). The tradition of the Church sends him to Scythia and Greece; he dies martyred on an X-shaped cross — the crux decussata that bears his name to this day.
James the son of Zebedee — called, with his brother John, from their boat and from their father. The Gospels give James and John the nickname Boanerges — Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17) — a name that speaks of temperament: the same men who asked Jesus whether they should call fire down from heaven on a Samaritan village that did not receive Him (Luke 9:54), who asked through their mother to sit at His right and left hand in the Kingdom (Matthew 20:20–21). James is the first of the Twelve to be martyred — beheaded by Herod Agrippa I in Jerusalem around AD 44 (Acts 12:2). The tradition of the Church carries his body to Spain: the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, one of the great pilgrimage shrines of Christendom, marks the place of his burial.
John the son of Zebedee — the brother of James, the Beloved Disciple, the one who leaned on Jesus's breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23), who stood at the foot of the Cross (John 19:26), who outran Peter to the tomb and believed at the sight of the burial cloths (John 20:8). He is the only one of the Twelve who does not die a martyr's death — tradition records that his executioners boiled him in oil and he emerged unharmed, after which he was exiled to Patmos, where he received the vision of the Book of Revelation. He died in old age in Ephesus, the last surviving Apostle, still writing and speaking of the one commandment: "Little children, love one another."
MATTHEW AT THE TAX BOOTH
"As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he rose and followed him." — Matthew 9:9
Matthew — also called Levi (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27) — is among the most unlikely of the Twelve. Tax collectors in first-century Judea were not merely civil servants; they were collaborators with the Roman occupation, men who had purchased the right to collect taxes and typically collected more than the official rate, keeping the surplus for themselves. They were despised as traitors, treated as ritually unclean, excluded from the synagogue and from normal Jewish social life. No rabbi of Jesus's day would have accepted a tax collector as a disciple — the association would have been too damaging.
Jesus sits at Matthew's table for a meal (Matthew 9:10), and when the Pharisees object — "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" — His answer is the theological principle that governs the entire shape of the calling: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:12–13)
The calling of Matthew is the calling of every sinner who has ever been surprised by grace — confronted by the love of God in the midst of an unworthy life, offered the dignity of discipleship before any amendment has been made, called before any qualification has been established. Matthew's response is the only appropriate one: he rises and follows. And then he makes a feast.
THE TWELVE: THE COMPLETE LIST
The Twelve are named in all three Synoptic Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles. The four lists do not differ in substance; the names appear in different groupings and occasionally with different forms of the same name.
The Twelve, with their identifying particulars:
Simon Peter — the Rock, head of the Apostles, martyred in Rome under Nero, crucified upside down at his own request, not considering himself worthy to die as his Lord had died. The first Pope.
Andrew — Peter's brother, the first called; tradition sends him to Scythia, Greece, and Asia Minor. Martyred on an X-cross at Patras in Greece.
James the son of Zebedee — Son of Thunder, first martyred Apostle, beheaded by Herod Agrippa I in Jerusalem, AD 44. His body venerated at Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
John the son of Zebedee — the Beloved Disciple, author of the Fourth Gospel, three Epistles, and the Book of Revelation. Exiled to Patmos; died in old age at Ephesus.
Philip — from Bethsaida, the same town as Peter and Andrew. When Nathanael doubts whether anything good can come from Nazareth, Philip gives the only sufficient answer: "Come and see" (John 1:46). The tradition of the Church sends Philip to Phrygia in Asia Minor; he is martyred at Hierapolis.
Bartholomew — most likely identical with Nathanael of John's Gospel, the one of whom Jesus says "an Israelite in whom there is no guile" (John 1:47). The tradition sends him to India (particularly to the region of Gujarat) and then to Armenia, where he is martyred by being flayed alive. His feast day is celebrated with particular devotion in India.
Matthew — the tax collector; author of the First Gospel. The tradition sends him to Ethiopia or Persia; he is martyred.
Thomas — called Didymus, the Twin. The disciple whose doubt became the occasion for the highest confession in the Gospel ("My Lord and my God" — John 20:28). By the firm and ancient tradition of the Church in India — a tradition maintained without interruption for nearly two thousand years — St. Thomas the Apostle brought the Gospel to the Malabar Coast of Kerala in AD 52. The St. Thomas Christians of Kerala are his direct spiritual descendants. He is martyred at Mylapore, near what is now Chennai, where the Cathedral of San Thome stands over the site of his tomb. He is the Apostle of India.
James the son of Alphaeus — called James the Less (or the Younger) to distinguish him from James the son of Zebedee. The tradition identifies him with James the brother of the Lord, the leader of the Jerusalem church, martyred by being thrown from the Temple pinnacle and then stoned, around AD 62.
Thaddaeus — also called Judas the son of James (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13), to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot. At the Last Supper, it is this Judas who asks: "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" (John 14:22) — the question that draws from Jesus one of the most beautiful promises in the Gospel: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." The tradition sends him to Mesopotamia and Persia.
Simon the Zealot — identified in every list by this title alone. The Zealots were the party committed to the violent overthrow of Roman occupation — and yet Simon sits at the same table as Matthew the tax-collector, the Roman collaborator. The community that Jesus forms contains within itself the most extreme political opposites — united not by common political vision but by the common call to follow Him. This is itself a parable of the Kingdom.
Judas Iscariot — always named last, always with the identification that follows him through every list and every century: "who betrayed him" (Matthew 10:4). His story is not avoided by the Church but held with terrible honesty. He was chosen. He was called. He walked with Jesus, heard every teaching, witnessed every miracle. And he betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. The warning the Church has always drawn from Judas is not that some are predestined to damnation — it is that proximity to Christ does not automatically produce transformation. Knowledge without love, closeness without surrender, the form of discipleship without its substance — this is the spiritual condition that Judas embodies and that every disciple is called to examine in themselves.
THE MISSION OF THE TWELVE
The calling of the Twelve is not merely an act of personal discipleship — it is the founding of an institution. He gathers twelve — the number of the tribes of Israel, the number that signals the reconstitution of God's people — and He gives them a share in His own authority and mission.
"And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction." — Matthew 10:1
The Twelve are not learners who become teachers after a course of study. They are sent — apostoloi, those sent out — while still learning, still failing, still misunderstanding. Their mission precedes their completeness. This is the permanent pattern of apostolic ministry: the Church is not sent when she is ready; she is sent before she is ready, in the trust that the one who sends will provide what the sending requires.
The instructions Jesus gives them at their first sending (Matthew 10:5–42) are among the most searching in the entire Gospel — the instructions that apply not only to the Twelve going out in pairs through the towns of Galilee but to every missionary, every priest, every baptised Christian who has ever tried to carry the Gospel into a world that does not always want it:
"Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
"And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved." (Matthew 10:22)
"What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops." (Matthew 10:27)
"Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me." (Matthew 10:40)
THE APOSTLES AND THE CHURCH
The Twelve Apostles are the foundation of the Church — not metaphorically but structurally. The Book of Revelation describes the holy city, the New Jerusalem, as having twelve foundations, and "on the foundations were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Revelation 21:14). The Church does not merely honour the Apostles as her founders; she is built on them, her sacramental life and doctrinal authority flowing through the unbroken chain of apostolic succession that stretches from the Upper Room to every bishop ordained in the Catholic Church today.
The bishop is not a church administrator. He is a successor of the Apostles — one who has received, through the laying on of hands in an unbroken line from the Twelve, the authority that Jesus gave them on the lake shore and in the Upper Room: to teach, to sanctify, to govern in His name. When the bishop ordains a priest, or confirms a soul, or celebrates the Eucharist, he acts in the person of Christ — and the authority by which he acts is the authority that came from the Lake of Galilee, from the word "Follow me" spoken to two fishermen casting their net into the water on an ordinary morning that became the most extraordinary morning in the history of the world.
A CLOSING PRAYER
Lord Jesus, who called fishermen and tax collectors, zealots and doubters, the impulsive and the faithful, and made of them the foundation of Your Church —
You call still.
You come still to the lake shore where we are working at our ordinary lives, and You say the same two words: Follow me.
Give me the grace to leave the net. Give me the grace to rise from the tax booth. Give me the grace to hear my name spoken in Your voice and to know that it is enough — more than enough — to stand up and go.
Amen.
"And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach." — Mark 3:14
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