A SERMON FOR ST. ANDREW’S DAY

St. Andrew, Patron of the Scottish Nation

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

As a White, Scotch-Irish American man who has sought from childhood to be faithful to the Christian inheritance handed down to me, holding fast to the tradition as received from my Scottish Nonjuring Fathers, and standing in submission to the Orthodox Faith of the Seven Holy Councils, I must say what many fear to articulate. The crisis among so many young white men today (the unhappiness, emptiness, restlessness, acedia, and moral listlessness that so many are now confessing openly), is not the result of a lack of heritage, nor the absence of something worth loving, nor the supposed guilt of being born into a people with nothing but sins to their name. It is the result of a long, calculated alienation from their own patrimony. 

They have been told for years that their inheritance is wicked, that their fathers were nothing but oppressors, that their history is unworthy of gratitude, and that the only way to be moral is to despise everything that formed them.

This is not true.

Our heritage is not bad.

It is not non-existent.

It is not derived from hatred or reaction or bitterness.

It is not rooted in racism, nor is it reducible to ideology or political tribalism.

Rather, our inheritance, when rightly understood, purified, and reclaimed, is derived from love, gratitude, faithfulness, and repentance. It is a return to the deep well from which our fathers drew courage, hope, and sanctity. It is a remembrance of the virtues for which they prayed and laboured: loyalty, discipline, chastity, justice, charity, hospitality, reverence before God, and the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. It is a sober acknowledgment of their sins and failures, but also a joyful recognition of the beauty they preserved, the faith they handed down, and the saints whom they honored.

St. Andrew of Scotland, Pray for Us! 

We cannot change our race. God created us this way, just as He created the other races. We should not hate any man or woman based on things that they cannot change, and, so, we cannot condone the evil ideology that is being used to blame, shame, and try to destroy our blessed heritage and holy patrimony! 

We should not castrate and render our heritage fruitless voluntarily, to serve the evil and godless ideology of others. 

We must re-learn, re-appropriate, and return to that faithful Patrimony from which we have been purposefully alienated. 

White young men today do not suffer from a lack of identity. They suffer because the identity that is theirs by gift, by heritage, and by grace has been slandered, suppressed, pathologized, and replaced with hollow imitations. Without a rooted inheritance, they float untethered in a sea of nihilism and addiction. Without a story larger than themselves, they latch onto extremisms and artificial tribes online that teach hatred for lack of anything beautiful or good. Without fathers, they look for saviors. Without saints, they latch on to idols.

But Christ gives us something far better: a redeemed, chastened, and sanctified way of belonging. Every people and race has the witness in their history. The Ethiopians grace Africans with a truly Apostolic lineage of St. Mark the Apostle. The Assyrians grace the Middle East with a truly Christ-Centered life, descending from Sts. Thomas, Thaddeus and Mari. China has the great hero’s of Sts. Alopen, Jingjing, Yaballaha, and Bar Sauma. All around the world, cultures that came into contact with Christ’s Gospel were converted and transformed, leaving the darkness of sin for God’s abundant light and life. And our heritage is no different. 

The St. Andrew’s Saltier Cross, the Triumphant Banner of King Angus of Scotland 

From the earliest centuries, the Scottish people came to understand themselves as heirs of St. Andrew through the arrival of his sacred relics and the ecclesial memory carried by the Celtic Church. According to ancient tradition, the monk St. Regulus brought to the eastern coast of Scotland not only portions of Andrew’s bones, but specifically the Apostle’s right hand, the very hand that blessed, taught, and ordained the first disciples. For centuries, bishops and abbots of Scotland received consecration “beneath the Hand of Andrew,” seeing their ministry not as an institution imposed from abroad but as an inheritance flowing directly from the First-Called Apostle. The shrine at St. Andrews became a center of learning, pilgrimage, and monastic discipline, where faith and identity intertwined, and where the Scots saw themselves not merely as Christians, but as a people shaped, protected, and instructed by an apostolic father. 

This Andrewite connection only deepened through the great controversies of the seventh century. When the Council of Whitby gathered in AD 664 to debate Easter customs and the authority of competing ecclesial traditions, the Celtic clergy of the North stood not as errant monks or beggars, but as bearers of a distinct apostolic lineage, which was rooted in Sts. Andrew, John, and the missionary Fathers and Wonderworkers of Iona. Northumbria’s decision to adopt Roman practice did not extinguish this great inheritance. On the contrary, Whitby clarified for Scotland that her faith had never been a mere provincial extension of Roman jurisdiction, but was important in her own right. The Scottish Church, shaped by Sts. , Columba, and Kentigern, continued to preserve her Andrewite rites, the Ancient Liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem, in equality, brotherhood, collegial independence, and monastic sanctity for centuries, guarding the inheritance received from her fathers and refusing to surrender her freedom to foreign ecclesiastical control. Whitby revealed a contrast between traditions, and Scotland resolved to remain faithful to her own. 

Thus, when the x-like Saltire Cross blazed across the sky at the Battle of Athelstaneford in AD 832, long after the Council of Whitby, it was received not as a novelty, but as a divine confirmation of a long-believed truth - that St. Andrew was truly the guardian of the Scottish people! On the morning of the battle, King Angus beheld a great white X-shaped cross shining against the blue heavens, recalling the holy apostle’s martyrdom, and vowed that if victory were granted, St. Andrew would forever be the national patron. The unlikely triumph that followed sealed this vow in the heart of the nation. From that day, the Saltire Flag (the white Cross of St. Andrew on a field of blue) became the sacred banner under which the Scots marched, prayed, fought, and hoped. It was a sign not merely of a tribal pride, but of apostolic blessing, a reminder that their story was shaped by the Gospel, their nation sheltered by an Apostle, and their identity grounded not in blood alone but in holiness, covenant, and the hand of St. Andrew resting upon their history.

This is why I say without embarrassment that here, on this Scottish celebration of St. Andrew, we see not a secular holiday, nor a racial signal, nor a political symbol. We see the celebration of a saint who is a cornerstone of our Apostolic Succession, the First-Called Apostle, the father in faith of the Scottish people, and a witness to Christ who transmits to us an inheritance not of blood alone but of holiness.

The St. Andrew’s Tartan, National Tartan of All Scottish People, Purple Representing the Royal Priesthood, the Seas Crossed to Spread Christ’s Holy Gospel in the Dark Blue, and the Rich Green of the Flourishing Life of the Holy Spirit

To reclaim St. Andrew is not to exalt ethnicity; it is to honour the Gospel that came to our ancestors, the Cross that shaped our people, and the apostolic root that nourished the Scottish Nonjuring Church, from which our own Western Orthodox patrimony draws life. It is an act of repentance for forgetting the good, and an act of renewal in remembering what God gave us through those who came before.

Our heritage, at its best, is a gift received in humility, a treasure purified through trial, and a trust handed on for the salvation of future generations. We remember being enslaved. We commemorate being defeated. We look up to those oppressed and alienated slaves and surfs who escaped tyranny and brought their families to the New World, where they could find freedom. It belongs not to pride but to stewardship. It calls not to domination but to service. It exists not to divide but to bless.

May young men of our time rediscover this holy inheritance. May they see that it is good, because God is good. And may they learn again to stand in the freedom and dignity of sons, not orphans: rooted not in resentment, but in the ancient, living faith of the Church of Christ. May the turn from hate and reaction, and embrace love and new life in Christ! 

If God is for us, then who can be against us? Let us then cling to Him, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, and let us boldly run the race, putting down all burdens and avoiding all stumbling-blocks, so that we may serve Him as faithful Stewards and Servants of His Coming Kingdom! 

COLLECT

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who didst call thy servant Saint Andrew to be the first-called among the Apostles, and didst send him forth as a herald of the Gospel unto many nations, raising him up in thy providence to be the Enlightener and protector of the Scottish people: Grant unto us the grace to follow his steadfast faith, his holy boldness, and his meek endurance; that, strengthened by his prayers and example, we may ever proclaim the Cross of Christ, and walk in the way that leadeth unto life eternal. Through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Let Us Remember the Great Saints and Fathers of Our Holy Patrimony, Rejecting Fear, Hatred, Violence and Manipulation, Praying for the Salvation of All, and Hold Fast to the Faith Once and For All Delivered to the Saints! St. Andrew, Pray for Us!