Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle

Lectionary: 629

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...
If you've been to Rome you know the word massive. Saint Peter's Basilica and many of the churches are built with enormous stones and enriched with statues of gigantic proportions. The doors of Saint John Lateran might be absurdly high but were the statues to become animated they would need very high doors to escape into the streets of Rome. 
Rome, of course, is the city of apostles and they are massively important in our Catholic tradition. 
While many Protestant churches bill themselves as apostolic, the Catholic churches claims a direct line of personal, physical contact from bishop to bishop back to the apostles Peter and Paul and Bartholomew. This apostolic succession has been maintained with each succeeding generation placing their hands on the heads of the next generation, thus ordaining them in the original spirit, words and gestures of Jesus. Despite the interference of rival popes and unworthy bishops, the chain is unbroken.  This apostolic succession also is massively important to Catholics; it represents the corporeality of the Incarnation of Jesus. His Church is not just a spiritual fellowship of friends; it is a corporation authorized to maintain his presence -- by way of the Eucharistic Presence -- until his Second Coming. 
While we appreciate the importance of spirituality, the Church is genetically suspicious of any movement which would divorce itself from the body while claiming to own the "true spirit." Dispirited bodies are dead; and disembodied spirits have never managed to persuade us they actually exist. They're probably only figments of the imaginative. But we can see, hear, touch, and smell living bodies; they are animated with life.
With all that being said, we can admit we know little of Saint Bartholomew. Even his name is uncertain and he may have been called Nathaniel. Tradition -- which is often reliable -- says he was martyred by flaying, which is particularly ghastly. His horrible image appears in Michelangelo's Last Judgement; the pallid face is said to be the artist's own, as he was weary of the project. 
He is remembered more fondly for the many hospitals and parishes that bear his name. His painful death gave him compassion for the sick and authority to heal the wounded. 
On this quiet summer day our liturgy invites us once again to thank God for the presence of our Church with all its flaws, blemishes and cancerous sins. A vessel of clay, it still contains the living Spirit of Jesus.