St. Andrew the Apostle Returns To Ukraine

"This must be a simple and warm world," Apostle Andrew, the first called of Jesus, told himself prophetically, "here people listen to the voices of the land and seek heaven." Later, St. Andrew got to know the Venedy, our ancestors, and saw that "this people will not fight others, this land will not covet other lands, but before long deadly clouds will gather all over it."

We see "St. Andrew atop a big hill, erecting a tall wood cross, the first one in these parts... He baptizes people and the land, blesses children and everyone living here. This land will know great happiness, but it will also experience so much pain, suffering, and death. The Apostle weeps atop the big hill."

The above excerpts are from Natalia Dziubenko's new novel Andriy Pervozvanny (St. Andrew, the First Called), an epic about a man who was the first to bring the Good News to the Slavic lands. The Apostle Andrew, a Galilean fisherman of Bethsaida, brother of the Apostle Peter reached the Dnieper shores in the fourth decade AD, at the beginning of Christianity.

This new book is a monumental, colorful work in which history is complemented by a keen insight into the mysticism of creed and of the soul. It is a novel in the truest, currently a bit obscure, sense of the word. The reader feels a strong affinity to the characters and events, and remembers them long after turning the last page. The plot is whimsical, with countless unexpected turns and masterfully portrayed intertwined destinies and epochs. It is a gripping account of human souls transformed by exposure to the forces of good and evil. Dozens of strikingly real characters masterfully created, leaving a vivid impression, among them the immaculate Jesus, saddened with eternal knowledge, wrapped in a golden cloak, the Great Mother surrounded by faithful wolves, fearless warriors astride serpentine horses, bewitching Polissian river-maids, world-weary Roman bureaucrats, great sinners, and more. However, the novel's greatest asset is perhaps that "behind the visible world one discerns a different, real one..." revealing forgotten yet ever alive links of that endless historical chain that can be broken neither by people nor even by time.

Sage and simple Andrew is portrayed with a delicate touch (in fact, the New Testament mentions this Apostle only nine times; there is no conclusive historical evidence about his missionary trips). Natalia Dziubenko's Andrew is a personality whose soul is wholly and thoroughly dedicated to the Lord. He is an Apostle of Love who never "broke souls, hearts, destroyed tribes and peoples, but who steered them aright " with his words. He believed that the teachers of fear are always in motion, but "will the people ever find the teachers of freedom?" It is extremely interesting to follow the author's ideas as she lets the reader have an insight into the Apostle's heart at the moment of ultimate truth, when healing people or delivering prophecies; he can look into the future, and what he sees fills him with sadness.

Russia rightfully takes pride in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita as a mystical insight in The Word. Now we have Natalia Dziubenko's St. Andrew the First Called which is even more mystical, and which will surely find devotees. Carefully and expertly incorporating historical and New Testament context (using sources she knows in the most minute detail), the author builds situations never described by the Evangelists but which logically could have happened, filling the temporal lacunae between universally known events. Owing to her talent, erudition, and creative imagination, she describes numerous extremely divergent and highly dramatic scenes from the life of the world's first Christian community led by Jesus and his disciples.

The novel is also a thoughtful approach to current realities, an attempt to answer the eternal questions, Why is this great and rich land so defenseless, exposed to all that blows in the wind? Why can all who wish rape this land with sword and fire? When will this people finally become its own true master? Is there really no way to progress other than through suffering, disease, sweat, and blood? Natalia Dziubenko is convinced that "it is only through love that our people will shed its animal skin and show the rest of the world its true immortality."