LIVES OF THE SAINTS

He chose twelve, whom He also named apostles.

Luke 6:13

St. Simon

Simon bears the most political of the names among the Twelve. Luke calls him Simon the Zealot; Matthew and Mark call him the Cananaean, which is not a place but the same word in Aramaic, kana, meaning zealous. Both names point back to the Zealots, the Jewish party that sought to throw off Roman rule by force. Whether Simon had belonged to them or only shared their fervor, the Gospels keep the name on him, and it is worth keeping, because of who stood beside him.

In the same company of Twelve was Matthew, a tax collector who had served Rome. A Zealot and a collaborator, whom the politics of their day had set as enemies, were made brothers by the One who called them both. It is one of the quiet wonders of the apostolic band, and it speaks to something the Church has needed in every age: that the table of Christ seats together those whom the world has set against each other.

Of Simon's own deeds the Gospels record nothing; he is a name among the Twelve and a zeal made new. Tradition sends him to preach widely after Pentecost, through Egypt and North Africa and, in some accounts, as far as Britain, and most often places his martyrdom in Persia, where he was put to death by being sawn asunder, frequently in the company of the Apostle Jude. An older tradition, which the Church holds loosely, also names him the bridegroom at the wedding in Cana, the feast where Christ turned water into wine and worked the first of His signs; if it is so, then at his own table, at the very beginning, Simon had seen what Christ could do.

In the icon he is shown as an older, bearded man holding a scroll. He is the apostle of zeal transfigured, whose fierceness was not destroyed but turned, so that a man whose nation had taught him to fight gave his life instead for the whole world.