St. Bartholomew
“Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets spoke: Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth’” (John 1:45).
Today is the feast of St. Bartholomew, an apostle, previously called Nathaniel.
We're told that Philip “found” Nathaniel. It's an interesting verb because it shows that Philip had the disposition of an authentic apostle. He found Nathaniel because he was looking for him.
An apostle is someone who looks for souls and discovers them among his friends, neighbors, acquaintances, random meetings, chance encounters.
Philip told Nathaniel the greatest piece of news that he had discovered in his own life: “‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth.’”
Nathaniel gives a rather disconcerting reply. He's not very impressed. “Nathaniel said to him, ‘From Nazareth? Can anything good come from that place?’” (John 1:46).
Those of us who might be from a small village, a small town, a small city, a small country, could feel a little bit the sting of that geographical slur. How dare he? But of course, in time, he's going to get his answer.
But Philip was not put off by this fairly negative attitude. “Philip replied, ‘Come and see.’” Often, this is what we say to our friends. Come and see. Come and find out for yourself.
Come and see what this recollection, or this retreat, or this book I'm offering to you is all about—or this whole new supernatural vision of life, and society, and the meaning and purpose of our existence.
“When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him, he said: ‘There, truly, is an Israelite in whom there is no deception’” (John 1:47).
This is one of the few occasions in the Gospel when Our Lord praises an apostle, ‘a true Israelite in whom there is no deception, no duplicity, and hypocrisy.’ It's a pretty impressive compliment, coming from who it’s coming from.
“Nathaniel asked: ‘How do you know me?’ Jesus replied, ‘Before Philip came to call you, I saw you under the fig tree’” (John 1:48).
Our Lord is sort of revealing here that even before His human instruments come into play, souls are in the mind of God.
God has His plans. He's using and maneuvering and bringing things about—those chance encounters, those opportunities—so that we would seize them. And also, so that the background influence of His gentle hand, fatherly hand, would remain hidden, possibly only discovered years, decades, later, if at all.
“Nathaniel answered: ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel’” (John 1:49). It's an impressive statement of faith on Nathaniel's part.
Our Lord just sort of casually said, “I saw you under the fig tree.” There seems to be no comparison between Our Lord's simple statement and the monumental expression of faith that comes from Nathaniel.
Jesus lifts him to a higher level. “Jesus replied, ‘You believe that just because I said to you: I saw you under the fig tree. You are going to see greater things than that.’ And then he added, ‘In all truth I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending over the Son of man’” (John 1:50-51).
It’s quite a promise and a revelation, a source of hope.
Bartholomew was from Cana of Galilee. He was one of the Twelve Apostles. His friend Philip brought him to the Lord in the region of Jordan.
Our Lord bestowed this great praise on meeting him, as though Our Lord is giving us a hint of how much He values the virtue of sincerity, of speaking the truth, of being transparent so that people know what we're about.
We're not one person on the outside and a different person on the inside.
Bartholomew eventually was to preach the faith in Arabia and then in Armenia, where he was martyred.
He knew, like all good Israelites, that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, the city of David.
The prophet had foretold: “And you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, you who are not least among the clans of Judah, from you will come forth one who is to be a ruler in Israel” (Mic. 5:1).
Whatever Bartholomew's initial impressions, Philip is not put off by his words. He challenges him: ‘Come and see.’
In our apostolate, sometimes we invite people, sometimes we challenge them. Sometimes, like Philip, we also just share with them what we have discovered—great treasures of our life.
Philip knew that Christ does not mislead anyone. Jesus calls Nathaniel through Philip, just as he had called Peter through his brother Andrew.
This is how Divine Providence works, by calling and leading others to Christ, leading us through others.
We don't know the great plans that God has for the souls that He brings us in contact with or the plans that He has for our children.
One writer says, “God does not want to work on his own: his Wisdom and Goodness include our participation in the creation and order of things” (Otto Hophan, The Apostles). He wants to use us.
Wherever we are, in whatever occupation, wherever we live, whatever our contacts and friends are, we know that God wants to use me as an apostle.
He wants me to have that disposition of an apostle—to look for souls—and sometimes, to have that courageous initiative to find new ways of getting to those souls.
I heard a story about a student at Oxford University, who in the first year or two of the university tried to have a lot of dealings with his classmates.
He got in touch with many of them and had a lot of long discussions with many of them. But then after two years, he felt that in the field of apostolate, he had to break new ground, to find new ways of meeting new people.
He brought this to his prayer, asking for lights to see: How can I meet new people? He got the idea that most of the people who come to Oxford University come by train from London.
He had the idea at the start of the term of spending many hours each day at the railway station. When some young fellow gets off the train with a big suitcase looking a bit lost, he would approach him and ask him, ‘What college are you going to?’
Then he would accompany him there and that way, he got to know many new students coming to Oxford University. People said he was an “apostolic terrorist.”
Our Lord is banking on our courageous initiative. If the doers of this world are eager to do all the terrible things that they do, how much more should we be willing to find ways and means of spreading the good news?
Our Lord wants us to be instruments so that we can find the Nathaniels, as Philip found him, and tell them to ‘come and see.’
Nathaniel was astonished. He took Philip up on his invitation, on his challenge. He rose to the occasion. Our Lord won his fidelity forever.
He gave him that great compliment when He saw him arriving. It must have been very encouraging. Nathaniel wasn't expecting such great praise.
“He asked, ‘How do you know me?’ Our Lord gives this very simple answer, and on hearing Our Lord, Nathaniel seems to understand clearly. The Holy Spirit works.
The personal encounter with Christ produces a great conversion. Possibly the words of Our Lord reminded him of some intimate event in his life. Perhaps it was the confirmation of a resolution he had made in the past.
That encounter caused Nathaniel to make a heartfelt, explicit confession of faith in Our Lord as the Messiah: “‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel’” (John 1:49).
In the words of Our Lord for Nathaniel, in the words of praise, we see Our Lord's love for the sincere person—one who reflects the truth, who sees the truth, who knows their mission, who knows what they are on the inside, who doesn't have airs and graces, but conquered their pride and their vanity through the virtue of humility.
“‘In him, there is no guile.’” He's a man without pretense. A man whose “yes” is yes and his “no” is no. He's the complete opposite of the Pharisees.
We all have the possibility of being a modern-day Pharisee, being something on the outside, but yet something completely different on the inside.
“You honor me with your lips, but yet your heart is far from me” (cf. Matt. 15:8). “You whitewashed walls” (Matt. 23:27; Acts 23:3).
Our Lord really searches in his vocabulary to find very colorful words to say about the Pharisees.
Nathaniel does not have “two tongues, one for saying the truth and another for telling lies,” says St. Augustine (Commentary on St. John’s Gospel).
We could ask Our Lord that we might have a great hatred for lies and that in this period of prayer, we might resolve: Lord, for the rest of my life, help me to never tell a lie. May the ceiling fall on me. May my house collapse rather than that I would be willing to tell a lie because the devil is “the father of lies” (John 8:44). I don't need to be friends with the devil.
Help me to live by the truth, to speak the truth, to demand the truth from everyone around me, to reflect the truth, because the truth is beautiful.
Truth builds trust. When people tell us the truth, we can trust them. Trust builds loyalty, and loyalty is a very beautiful virtue: loyalty in marriage, loyalty in the family, loyalty in the organization, loyalty in the Church.
Hopefully, the same should be able to be said about each one of us because we are people of one piece who try to live the faith we possess with all of its consequences.
Lord, I'm ready to die for the truth because that's what the apostles and the martyrs did.
The lying person is filled with duplicity, ever vacillating, always sounds like a broken bell.
We're told by St. Josemaría: “You were reading in that dictionary the synonyms for insincere: ‘two-faced, surreptitious, evasive, disingenuous, sly.’ —As you closed the book, you asked the Lord that nobody should ever be able to apply those adjectives to you, and you resolved to improve much more in this supernatural and human virtue of sincerity” (Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow, Point 337).
The Furrow was very clear. Like all the virtues, we can always be growing in sincerity. It's a very good habit to get into, to speak the truth in a regular way, in Confession and spiritual direction, as well as in all other moments.
But when it comes to Confession and spiritual direction, we can speak the truth in a special way. There may be things from deep down, in those deep crevices of our soul that have passed through our mind or imagination or our heart during this week—ugly things, embarrassing things.
‘I thought this about that person. I said this other thing.’ These thoughts pass through my imagination—sordid thoughts, ugly thoughts, sensual thoughts.
All these things are ugly. When a priest hears all these things coming out in the sacrament of Confession, then he knows this person is trying to be holy, because the priest himself knows what he's made of. We're all the same.
This virtue is fundamental for following Christ since He is divine truth and abhors all deceit.
We have to try and reflect the truth in everything we do. Our Lord has told us that we have to “become like little children” (Matt. 18:3). Often little children have a knack for seeing the truth. They see past duplicity.
They know when they're being told a lie because they have a sensitive conscience. And if ever they tell a lie or they do something wrong, that little lie or that little misdeed weighs very heavily on their conscience.
‘I told a lie,’ a little kid might say in Confession, and when he gets the absolution, a big sigh of relief. ‘I've been forgiven.’
There was a little girl once who was looking at her mom who was combing her hair. The little girl said to her mom: “Mom, why are some of your hairs gray?”
The Mom said: “Well, you see, every time that you do something naughty, one of my hairs turns gray.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the little girl said: “And why are Grandma’s hairs all gray?” The mother had to bite her tongue.
We always have to speak the truth because little children see the truth. Even Christ's enemies recognized His love for the truth.
“Master,” they said on one occasion, “we know you are truthful and teach the way of God in truth and care not for any man, but you do not regard the person of men” (Matt. 22:16).
Our sincerity can lead us not to have any human respect—not to have respect for people just because of who they are or what they say—but to have divine respect: not to be worried about what people may think of us, of what we say or what we do, but to be more concerned about what God may think or what God may say.
He wants us to be people who “let our speech be ‘yes, yes’ and ‘no, no.’ Whatever is beyond these comes from evil” (Matt. 5:37).
God wants us to be a man or woman of our word—that when we say we're going to do something, then we do it. There are many good examples for our children, so they don't say that we're someone of many words, but little action.
This contrasts very markedly with the father of lies. He's always trying to lead men into sin, which is the greatest deception.
We have to try and promote the message in the world that sin is the only evil.
All the other things in the world we may think are evils—cancer, lack of health, financial embarrassment, things not working out the way we planned, failing an exam, failing a driving test—all these things are not really evils.
These may be the pathway to heaven that God gives us. The only thing that can lead us into hell is sin.
Our Lord is always understanding and merciful with every human weakness; strictly condemns the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He can't stand it: their duplicity, their lack of unity of life.
Hence the great joy when Our Lord encounters Bartholomew. We also have the same experience when we find or meet somebody whom we can see as transparent. We know the sort of person they are. There's no duplicity in them.
That truth brings authentic freedom. The Gospel verse establishes a close relationship between truth and freedom. “The truth will make you free” (John 8:32).
Often, when we have deeper truths inside us, maybe, sinful truths—things from our past life, shameful, embarrassing things that are difficult to get out—but we come and confess them, it can be an enormously liberating experience. That's an experience we want everybody else on the planet to have.
I remember a Protestant man who had converted to Catholicism, coming to Confession and saying his sins, and saying: “You know, Father, I really enjoy my confession every week, coming here and being able to say all the terrible things, and knowing that I will be understood and forgiven and that I can walk out of here a free man.”
He said: “You know, when I was a Protestant, and we confessed our sins directly to God, that sounds very good, but the trouble with that is that you don't know whether you've been forgiven or not.
“But when I hear those words, ‘I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,’ this is the joy of my week.”
The truth will make you free: speaking about those inner truths that we have, or things that are worrying us, or make us anxious, or fearful. When we get them out, we discover a new joy.
May we never fear the truth, even though on occasion it might seem that the truthful thing that we say or do will bring some trouble that we could avoid with a lie. Only good can come from the truth.
Lying is never worthwhile, because also, we can get into the habit of living a lie. Our whole life can become a lie. We may know people whose lives are like that.
It's never worthwhile lying just for some economic gain, at the expense of some little sacrifice of truth, or for freeing us from some punishment, or from having to undergo a rough time.
We have to try and speak the truth on all occasions, even when we're stopped by the police when we've gone down the wrong street, or parked in the wrong place, or broken the speed limit. The truth, always.
We try to be sincere with God, sincere with ourselves, and that can lead us to be sincere with others. That also leads us to the great virtue of simplicity, where we're simple, transparent.
We reflect Christ in a better way. If we are not truthful, or we're not sincere in our relations with other people, then living together with others can become difficult, or even impossible.
“In a world separated from truth, human existence can become increasingly clouded and darkened by error” (Spanish Episcopal Conference, Pastoral Instruction, The truth will make you free).
We're all very much aware we need to try and foster a much greater truth in the media, in television, in the newspaper, in all sorts of reporting, and to encourage journalists to live by the truth; not to sell their soul.
Because if the opposite happens, “Then, almost imperceptibly, society can begin to deceive itself by preferring evil to good” (Ibid.). Christ has called us to drown out that evil and replace it with good (cf. Rom. 12:21).
We should be particularly straightforward with God, in order to approach Him without anonymity, not wanting to cover anything up, with the joy and trust a good child has in the presence of their good parents.
In this way, we can learn the real state of our soul. And those who, in the name of the Lord, are there to help us—they can be more effective.
We try and recognize our guilt. If we don't recognize our guilt, we cannot receive grace. It's not just a matter of attitude towards another person, the confessor, but to God Himself.
When we go to Confession, we don't just confess our sins to a person. The priest is acting in the person of Christ. Christ is the one who listens to our sins, who absolves us.
St. Augustine says, “God is the one, not you personally, who can bandage your wounds. If you hide your sores with bandages, the doctor will not be able to cure you.
“It is necessary to let the doctor do the dressing, since he covers them with the right medicine. While wounds heal with a doctor's treatment, they fester with the inexpert intervention of the sick person.”
St. Augustine says: “From whom do you suppose you are hiding them? From the one who knows all things” (St. Augustine, Second Discourse on Psalm 31).
If we're sincere, our sins themselves will be an occasion to unite ourselves more intimately with God.
Look at how sincere Mary Magdalene was. The great sinner, the sinner in the city, who became the great lover, the model of someone who learned how to love Jesus Christ to the cross, to Easter Sunday morning. No wonder Our Lord chose her as a model for us.
These are shortcomings that make difficult following Christ closely united to Him, and they pose serious impediments in helping others draw near to Jesus.
The simple person does not get muddled or complicated. He sets out directly to please God in all circumstances, both in what appears good and in what appears bad.
Alongside sincerity, naturalness and simplicity constitute, says St. Josemaría in Friends of God, “two marvelous human virtues which enable one to receive the message of Christ. Conversely, all interior entanglements and complications, the twisting and turning inside and out of one's own problems, present a barrier to anyone who hears Our Lord's voice” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 90).
Today we could ask St. Bartholomew to help us to gain these two virtues which please Our Lord so much and are so necessary: necessary for prayer, necessary for friendship, for dealings with others, and for apostolate.
Let us ask Our Lady for the grace to go through life without any duplicity, and always with sincerity and simplicity.
“The liturgy says: ‘You are all fair, O Mary, without original sin!’ (Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Song 4:7). In her, there is not the slightest shadow of that vice,” we're told in the Furrow.
“I pray daily to Our Mother that we may be able to open our souls in spiritual direction, and that the light of grace may shine out from all our behavior. Mary will obtain for us the courage to be sincere, if we ask her for it, so that we may come closer through her to the Most Blessed Trinity” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 339).
St. Bartholomew, today, can be our principal intercessor before Our Lady, Queen of Apostles.
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