TRINITY · 24 AUGUST
Saint Bartholomew the Apostle
Apostle & Martyr · The Man Seen Under the Fig Tree · India, Armenia & the Unknown East
Bartholomew — bar-THOL-oh-myoo · Nathanael — na-THAN-ay-el · Cana — KAY-na · Armenia — ar-MEE-nee-a · Albanopolis — al-ban-OP-oh-lis · Eusebius — yoo-SEE-bee-us
O Almighty and everlasting God, who didst give to thine Apostle Bartholomew grace truly to believe and to preach thy Word; Grant, we beseech thee, unto thy Church, to love that Word which he believed, and both to preach and receive the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
His entry into the Gospel is one of the most beautiful in all of the four: Philip found Nathanael (na-THAN-ay-el) and said We have found him, of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip said unto him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael said unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. From scepticism to the highest Christological confession in a single exchange — the apostle who begins with Can anything good come out of Nazareth? ends with Thou art the Son of God. Bartholomew (bar-THOL-oh-myoo), identified by most scholars with this Nathanael of the fourth Gospel, is the Apostle of immediate recognition: the man who, once he actually came and saw, saw everything.
After the Resurrection, Bartholomew appears in the list of Apostles and at the gathering in the upper room, and then disappears from the scriptural record entirely. The tradition divides him between India and Armenia (ar-MEE-nee-a), with some accounts sending him first to the northwest of India and then to Armenia, where he is said to have preached extensively and to have been martyred, traditionally by flaying alive, in the city of Albanopolis (al-ban-OP-oh-lis). The Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the oldest national churches in the world, claims Bartholomew and Thaddaeus as its founders and traces its apostolic succession to them. Eusebius (yoo-SEE-bee-us) records that Pantaenus of Alexandria, travelling to India around 180 AD, found Christians there who possessed a Hebrew copy of Matthew’s Gospel and said it had been brought to them by Bartholomew. Whether this is historically reliable or not, it is evidence that by the late second century the tradition of Bartholomew’s Indian mission was well established and credible enough for a scholar of Alexandria to record.
The mystery of Bartholomew’s ministry is the mystery of all apostolic mission beyond the reach of the written record. He was given the same commission as all the others. He obeyed it. He went somewhere, to multiple somewheres, and preached and baptised and built communities and suffered and died. The Armenian church that traces its foundation to him — one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, which adopted Christianity as the state religion in 301 AD and whose liturgical tradition has been unbroken for seventeen centuries — is the visible fruit of an invisible planting. The Indian tradition associated with him, and the communities that may have descended from it, are more difficult to trace. But the Great Commission was given to all twelve equally, and the harvest that each one brought in from their obedience to it is proportional to the commission, not to the historical record. Bartholomew’s harvest is known to God.
His feast on 24 August falls in late Trinity-tide, in the final weeks of the long green season before it begins its turn toward Advent. He belongs here — in the long ordinary middle of the Church’s year, in the season of patient missionary faithfulness — as the Apostle who saw immediately and went far, who left behind a tradition strong enough to found national churches and create communities that have endured for two thousand years. The fig tree under which Jesus saw him becomes the figure of all contemplative preparation: the man who was seen in quiet before he was called to action, who was known by God in his hiddenness before he was sent into his public mission. The fig tree and the flaying knife are the alpha and omega of his story — seen in secret, died in public, his mission carried on by the Armenian church he planted and the Indian tradition that claims his memory.
O Almighty God, who didst see thy servant Bartholomew beneath the fig tree before he knew that he was seen, and who didst send him from that moment of recognition to the ends of the known world; Grant that we may be known by thee in our hiddenness as he was known, and sent by thee into whatever mission our obedience requires; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.