LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote.

John 1:45

St. Philip

Philip came from Bethsaida, the town of Peter and Andrew, and like Andrew his first act after Christ called him was to go and find someone else. He found Nathanael, traditionally identified with the Apostle Bartholomew, and told him, We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets wrote. When Nathanael doubted that anything good could come out of Nazareth, Philip did not argue. He said only, Come and see, the same invitation that had been given to him.

He appears more often than most of the Twelve in the Gospel of John, and often as a man working something out. It is Philip whom Christ tests before the feeding of the five thousand, asking how so many could be fed, and Philip who reckons the cost and sees no way to meet it. It is Philip who brings the visiting Greeks to Jesus, and Philip who, at the Last Supper, asks the question the whole Gospel has been answering: Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough. Christ's reply is among the great sentences of Scripture: He who has seen Me has seen the Father.

After Pentecost Philip preached through Asia Minor, and especially in Hierapolis in Phrygia, where the tradition remembers him confronting the pagan cults of the city. There he was martyred, in some accounts crucified, in some hung upside down like Peter. He should not be confused with Philip the Deacon, one of the seven appointed in the Book of Acts, who baptized the Ethiopian on the desert road; the two are different men, honored on different days, and often mistaken for each other because they share a name and a zeal to bring outsiders in.

In the icon Philip is usually shown young and beardless, holding a scroll. He is the apostle of the honest question, who needed to see before he could believe and was not ashamed to say so, and who learned that the answer to every question he asked was a person. His instinct never changed from the first day to the last: when in doubt, come and see.