Saint Bartholomew

St. Philip came to him in Galilee with word of Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth. Cana, where he lived, lay about eight kilometres away, and he knew the village well. He answered with a blunt question about the place, and St. Philip did not argue with him.

St. John Chrysostom preached that he had studied the prophets more closely than St. Philip, and knew from them that the Christ was to come from Bethlehem. He went to see Jesus for himself.

Jesus spoke about him to those standing by before he had said a word. Asked how he was known, Jesus told him he had been seen under a fig tree before St. Philip ever called him. He answered by confessing Jesus as the Son of God and the King of Israel.

Pope Benedict XVI said that what happened under that fig tree is not known, and that it was clearly a decisive moment in his life. Jesus promised him greater things still: heaven opened, and the angels of God going up and coming down upon the Son of Man.

Jesus passed a night on the mountain-side, and at daybreak called his disciples and chose twelve of them. St. Bartholomew stands sixth in all three Gospel lists, beside St. Philip in St. Matthew and St. Luke.

The Twelve were appointed to be Christ's companions and to go out preaching, with power to cure diseases and cast out devils. Jesus sent them first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and into no city of Samaria.

After the Resurrection he went out fishing on the sea of Tiberias with St. Peter, St. Thomas and the sons of Zebedee, and they caught nothing all night. At morning Jesus stood on the shore, unrecognised, and the net came in with a hundred and fifty-three great fish and did not break.

Forty days of appearances ended on the Mount of Olives, where he watched a cloud take Jesus out of his sight. In the upper room at Jerusalem he prayed with the other apostles and with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.

He received the Holy Spirit with the rest of the apostles at the first Pentecost, and afterwards set out to preach. The Roman Martyrology records that he preached the Gospel of Christ in India, and Tradition holds that he passed from there into Greater Armenia.

Tradition reaching back to Eusebius holds that he left the Christians of India the Gospel of St. Matthew in Hebrew. About 190 AD a philosopher sent out from Alexandria found Christians in India, and that Gospel already with them.

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, he lodged in the temple of Astaroth in India as one of the poor, and from the day he entered the idol answered nobody and healed nobody. The Golden Legend tells that a man held by a demon cried out that the apostle's prayers were burning him, and was freed that hour.

The same Tradition holds that King Polymius sent for him to his daughter, kept in chains for tearing at her own limbs, and that the apostle told her keepers to loose her and let her go. Tradition holds that the king, the queen and their two sons were baptised with the whole city, and that the king laid down his crown.

Tradition holds that the temple priests went to Astyages, the elder brother of the converted king, and complained that a magician had broken their gods. A thousand armed men brought the apostle to him bound, and he was accused of perverting his brother.

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, recorded in the Roman Martyrology, St. Bartholomew converted many to the faith in Greater Armenia, was flayed alive by the barbarians and was beheaded by order of king Astyages. Tradition holds that twelve thousand believers carried his remains away with singing and laid them in the royal tomb.

The Emperor Anastasius had the relics moved to his new city of Duras in Mesopotamia in 508 AD. Before the end of the sixth century they were carried to the isle of Lipari near Sicily, and in 809 AD on to Benevento. In 983 AD they were conveyed to Rome, and in 998 AD the Emperor Otto III built a church on the Tiber Island to hold them, with the body of St. Adalbert of Prague.

The Roman Martyrology records the body venerated by the faithful on the island of the Tiber, and enters the apostle under August 24. Preaching on him in 2006 AD, Pope Benedict XVI said that attachment to Jesus can be lived and witnessed to without performing sensational deeds.