Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is August the twenty-fourth, and the Church keeps the Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle. We stand before a single, luminous paradox: the man who first said "can anything good come from Nazareth" is the same man whose name, tradition tells us, is now cut into a foundation stone of the eternal city. Grace does not despise an honest doubt. It answers it.

A reading from the Book of Revelation.

The angel spoke to me, saying, "Come here. I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." He took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It gleamed with the splendor of God. Its radiance was like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal. It had a massive, high wall, with twelve gates where twelve angels were stationed, and on which names were inscribed, the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. There were three gates facing east, three north, three south, and three west. The wall of the city had twelve courses of stones as its foundation, on which were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

The Word of the Lord.

Let us pray the Responsorial Psalm, from Psalm one hundred forty-five. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.

Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord, and let your faithful ones bless you. Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom and speak of your might. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.

Making known to men your might and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom. Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages, and your dominion endures through all generations. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.

The Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his works. The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.

Alleluia, alleluia. Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel. Alleluia, alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John.

Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth." But Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, "Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him." Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered and said to him, "Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree." Nathanael answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel." Jesus answered and said to him, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this." And he said to him, "Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

The Gospel of the Lord.

Tradition has long identified Nathanael, son of Tolmai, with Bartholomew, whom Matthew, Mark, and Luke always pair with Philip in their lists of the Twelve. Cornelius a Lapide observes that Nathanael's first words are not the sneer of a cynic but the honest hesitation of a devout Israelite, a man steeped in the prophets who knew Bethlehem, not Nazareth, was to be the Messiah's town. That honesty is why Christ says of him, with no qualification, "there is no duplicity in him." Guile is a double heart, one face for God and another for the world. Nathanael has one face only, and Christ sees straight through to it before a word has passed between them.

"Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree." Augustine will not let the fig tree pass as incidental detail. He recalls that the fig leaf first covers the shame of Adam after the fall, sewn together as a covering for a conscience newly aware of its own nakedness. To sit beneath the fig tree, in Augustine's reading, is to sit within the shade of that fallen condition, laboring in the prayer and self-examination of a soul still awaiting redemption. Christ's claim to have seen him there is not a parlor trick of clairvoyance. It is the claim of the eternal Word, present at the very hour a man wrestled alone with his own conscience, long before he ever wrestled with a name for the Messiah.

And so the confession comes all at once: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel." A moment ago Nathanael would not credit Nazareth. Now he confesses more than Philip proposed. This is the pattern of grace upon an honest heart. It does not trickle. It floods. Christ answers with a promise stretching to the horizon of all Scripture: "you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." Every ear formed on the Old Testament hears Jacob's ladder in those words, the vision at Bethel where angels climbed between earth and heaven on a stairway Jacob did not build. Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, in his catechesis on the Apostles, notes that Christ here declares himself the reality toward which that ancient vision only pointed. He is not shown a ladder to heaven. He is the ladder.

This is why the reading from Revelation belongs beside this Gospel. John the Seer is shown a wall with twelve foundations bearing the names of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb, Bartholomew's among them, literally load-bearing in the architecture of the eternal city. Saint Paul tells the Ephesians the Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself the cornerstone. The man once found sitting beneath a fig tree becomes, by grace, a stone upholding the dwelling place of God among men. What begins as one honest heart ends as a jasper wall gleaming with the splendor of God.

Bartholomew's later history is told less by Scripture than by ancient and constant tradition, but the Church has never doubted its substance. He is remembered as an apostle to the farthest edges of the known world, carrying the Gospel east into Armenia and, some traditions hold, as far as India. His martyrdom is among the most fearsome recorded of any apostle: flayed alive for refusing to renounce the Lord who had once called him a man without duplicity. It is why the Church's artists, from the ancient East to Michelangelo's brush in the Sistine Chapel, so often show him holding his own skin, a martyr's badge worn as a trophy rather than a wound. Flaying strips away precisely the outer covering, the very thing that in fallen man so often hides one face while showing another. Bartholomew had none to hide. The single, transparent heart Christ recognized beneath the fig tree is the same heart that, decades later, would not flinch under the knife. Sincerity that costs nothing is not yet virtue. Sincerity that costs everything, and is given anyway, is sanctity.

Let today be an examination, not of others, but of your own duplicity, the small double-heartedness that says one thing and nurses another. Ask Christ, who saw Nathanael under the fig tree before a word was spoken, to look at you the same way today, and to find, if not yet perfect sincerity, at least a heart willing to be made so.

May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.