Wednesday in the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, August 23, 2022

The Feast of St. Bartholomew

John 1, 45-51

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.”

“Philip found Nathanael.”  St. John’s accounts of the calling of the first Apostles imparts the excitement of those men in those days.  First, Andrew and John hear John the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of God, and they go and spend the day with him.  Andrew is impressed enough that he tells his brother Simon about Jesus and Simon goes back with him.  The next day, the Lord went and “found “Philip”, who then went and “found” Nathanael, presumably a friend, perhaps a relation.  This “finding” presupposes a searching.  Philip searched for and then found Nathaniel, who also went by Bartholomew (“the son of Thoma”.  Thus, as Andrew and John had searched for the Messiah, in so doing becoming disciples of John the Baptist, and then found him, so they sought out and found others to follow him.

“We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the Law, and also the Prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”  Moses wrote of a  great prophet in time to come: “The Lord your God will raise up to you a Prophet of your nation and of your brethren like unto me: him you shall hear” (Deuteronomy 18, 15).  The future Apostle undoubtedly referred to this.  As to what Philip meant by “the Prophets”, it seems he meant the Son of man of whom Daniel wrote, since this was what the Pharisees taught the people to expect.  “Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”  Thus did the Son of God identify himself to his creatures.  “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  Bartholomew’s question contains a pinch of contempt and may reveal a certain regional prejudice, as Nazareth, though enough of a town to have its own synagogue,  he considered it lesser than the place from which he hailed.  His skepticism that the Messiah could come from Nazareth also contrasts with Philip’s simple enthusiasm for Jesus.  It is as though St. John is saying that a person need not embrace the Lord and his Gospel immediately after hearing of him, but, as St. Paul says, he ought to “test everything; retain what it good” (1 Thessalonians 5, 21).  This Bartholomew does by going to meet the proposed Messiah himself.

“Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.”  That is, there is no deceit or treachery in him.  Jesus says of Bartholomew that he is the “true” child of Israel.  Now, Israel here is understood as both the nation and the ancestor.  As the ancestor, Israel’s name was originally “Jacob”, meaning “usurper”, a name he lived up to in his usurping his older brother Esau’s heritage.  When Jesus calls Bartholomew a true child of Israel, he is identifying him as a “true” Israel, free of treachery.  This declaration of Bartholomew’s virtue brought a question from him: “How do you know me?”  That is, how do you know my character?  The Lord’s answer is interesting: “said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”  The Lord says, “Before Philip called you”, that is, before Philip found you, not when Philip found you.  The Lord knew of the existence of Bartholomew before Philip saw him under the fig tree.  The Greek verb we usually translate as “to see” means “to see with the eyes” and also “to understand”, as in English we say, “Oh, I see.”  Jesus was both seeing Bartholomew from afar but was also present in his heart, “knowing” him there.  Jesus says that he saw him under “the fig tree”, which is a symbol of Israel.  It is also a very particular kind of tree, with wide, spreading branches.  Jesus informs him that not only did he see him under a tree, but under this tree.  Philip might also have had trouble locating Bartholomew because of the branches, but the Lord saw him there even without being present.  The addition of “fig tree” to the Lord’s answer may refer back to his calling Bartholomew a “true child of Israel”, and the future Apostle caught the inference.

The formerly skeptical Bartholomew answered back, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”  This seems a bit of an extreme act of faith even for the power the Lord has revealed to him, and it tells us something of the man’s impulsive nature and, probably, youth.  He shares this with the other Apostles, too, if we think about it.  Peter, of course; James and John, the “sons of thunder”; Matthew, who got up immediately from his custom’s post; Thomas, who counseled the other Apostles that they should go back to Judea with him in order to die with him there.  St. John is teaching here, using his example, that if we harbor doubts about the truth of the Lord and his Gospel we can go to him, studying his words, and if we have maintained an open mind, we will be granted faith.

“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.”  That is, you will understand greater things.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  It is not yet the time to reveal to him or the others the Passion and Death to come.  The Lord speaks here of the vision of the Son of man in the Book of Daniel, confirming what Philip had told him.  The scene the Lord describes will take place at the end of the world when he returns in glory to judge the human race.  There is an interesting detail that the Lord Jesus adds that is not in Daniel: “the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  This detail goes back to Jacob the ancestor, when he slept in the wilderness: “And he saw in his sleep a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top thereof touching heaven: the angels also of God ascending and descending by it” (Genesis 28, 12).  Jesus himself is the “ladder” between heaven and earth, the means by which those who are saved enter the Kingdom of his Father.  Bartholomew, the true Jacob, the true Israel, the fulfillment of his ancestor, would come to know Jesus as the true Ladder, and that the angels would lead souls to heaven by him.

St. Bartholomew is said to have preached the Gospel in Parthia and India, and also in Ethiopia.  He was martyred in Armenia.  The Armenian Apostolic Church considers him and St. Jude as its founder and patron.