The Apostles are the men Christ chose and sent out to preach the Gospel and establish His Church. They’re the foundation of everything we do as Orthodox Christians.
When most people hear “the Apostles,” they think of the Twelve. Peter, James, John, Andrew, and the others who walked with Jesus during His earthly ministry. Christ called them from their fishing nets and tax booths, taught them for three years, and sent them out with authority to heal, cast out demons, and proclaim the Kingdom of God. After Judas betrayed Christ and hanged himself, the remaining eleven chose Matthias to restore their number to twelve. That number mattered. It echoed the twelve tribes of Israel and showed that God was doing something complete, something perfect.
But the Church recognizes more apostles than just those twelve.
Luke’s Gospel tells us that Christ also appointed seventy disciples and sent them ahead of Him in pairs to every town He planned to visit. Some ancient manuscripts say seventy-two, and you’ll hear both numbers in Orthodox hymns and services. Either way, these men also received a commission directly from Christ. After Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem, these seventy went out across the known world preaching the Gospel. Some of them you know by name. Luke, who wrote a Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, was one of the Seventy. So was Mark, who wrote another Gospel. Timothy and Titus, whom Paul mentions in his letters, were among them too.
And then there’s Paul himself, who wasn’t part of the Twelve or the Seventy but encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and received his apostolic calling directly from heaven.
So what makes someone an apostle? The word itself means “one sent.” An apostle is someone commissioned by Christ with a message and authority. For the Twelve, that meant being eyewitnesses to Christ’s entire ministry, from His baptism by John through His resurrection. When they chose Matthias to replace Judas, that’s exactly what they looked for: someone who’d been with them the whole time and could testify to what he’d seen. For the Seventy and for Paul, apostleship came through direct commission from Christ and the work of spreading the Gospel to new places, often at the cost of their lives.
The Apostles didn’t just preach. They founded churches. They ordained bishops and presbyters. They established the pattern of worship and sacramental life we still follow. When you come to St. Michael’s on Sunday morning, the Divine Liturgy you experience goes back to them. The bishops who ordained Fr. [insert priest name] trace their ordination in an unbroken line back to the Apostles themselves. We call this apostolic succession, and it’s not just about paperwork or pedigree. It’s about the Holy Spirit working through human hands across two thousand years to preserve the faith once delivered to the saints.
We venerate the Apostles as saints. Each of the Twelve has his own feast day. Peter and Paul share one on June 29th. Andrew, who according to tradition brought the Gospel to the region around the Black Sea, is celebrated on November 30th. The Church sets aside January 4th for the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles, when we remember all of them together. St. Demetrius of Rostov went through Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers to compile the most accurate list he could of who these seventy were and where they preached. Many of them died as martyrs. Some became the first bishops of major cities.
Here in Southeast Texas, we’re a long way from Jerusalem and Antioch and Rome. But the faith the Apostles carried to those places two millennia ago is the same faith we practice now. When you’re baptized at St. Michael’s, you’re baptized with the baptism they taught. When you receive Holy Communion, you receive what they received in that upper room when Christ said, “Take, eat, this is My Body.” The Apostles aren’t just historical figures we read about. They’re our fathers in the faith, alive in Christ, praying for the Church they founded and died for.
If you want to learn more about the individual Apostles and their lives, the OCA website has a wonderful collection of their feast day commemorations with brief biographies. Each one has a story worth knowing.
