Feast of Saint Bartholomew

One family's grave site
in the Cemetery in Beckley, WV

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.

Whichever Vatican committee that selected today’s first reading for the feast of Saint Bartholomew surely had a sense of humor. We can only wish that the seer John of Patmos, who is credited with writing the Book of Revelation, had taken the trouble to write down the “twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb” when he saw the vision. That would have ended a lot of disputes before they began.

There are several lists in the New Testament: Saint Mark names "the twelve;” Saint Luke names “twelve disciples;” and Saint Matthew alone uses the expression, "the twelve apostles.” For the most part they agree on who they were. 
Saint John has no list though he names many disciples of Jesus. Bartholomew appears in Matthew, Mark, Luke and the Acts of the Apostles; but not in John. Instead we have Nathanial. The same person? Who knows?

For the sake of simplicity, the Roman calendar considers them the same person. So on this feast of Saint Bartholomew we hear the passage from Saint John's Gospel that concerns the  disciple Nathaniel. 

If you’ve ever seen a picture of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment – and you certainly have – Bartholomew is represented as the horrible image on the right side of the picture. According to legend he was skinned alive; what you’re seeing there is his blessed skin. (It is also a self-portrait of the painter who was still complaining about this painting project he didn’t want in the first place.)

So now perhaps you know two things that you didn’t know when you got up this morning.

On this feast of Saint Bartholomew/Nathaniel we pray that each of us may have the Saint's  simplicity of heart as when he first met the Lord, and that he will protect us from scrapes, bruises and diseases of the skin.