{"id":127,"date":"2007-08-24T09:24:37","date_gmt":"2007-08-24T09:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/st-bartholomewand-others.html"},"modified":"2007-08-24T09:24:37","modified_gmt":"2007-08-24T09:24:37","slug":"st-bartholomewand-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/st-bartholomewand-others.html","title":{"rendered":"St. Bartholomew..and others"},"content":{"rendered":"

From his series on the apostles, Pope Benedict on Bartholomew, traditionally associated with Nathanael, \u00a0last October:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

His heart is moved by Jesus’ words, he feels understood and he understands: “This man knows everything about me, he knows and is familiar with the road of life; I can truly trust this man”. And so he answers with a clear and beautiful confession of faith: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (Jn 1:\u00a049). In this confession is conveyed a first important step in the journey of attachment to Jesus. <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

Nathanael’s words shed light on a twofold, complementary aspect of Jesus’ identity: he is recognized both in his special relationship with God the Father, of whom he is the Only-begotten Son, and in his relationship with the People of Israel, of whom he is the declared King, precisely the description of the awaited Messiah. We must never lose sight of either of these two elements because if we only proclaim Jesus’ heavenly dimension, we risk making him an ethereal and evanescent being; and if, on the contrary, we recognize only his concrete place in history, we end by neglecting the divine dimension that properly qualifies him. <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

We have no precise information about Bartholomew-Nathanael’s subsequent apostolic activity. According to information handed down by Eusebius, the fourth-century historian, a certain Pantaenus is supposed to have discovered traces of Bartholomew’s presence even in India (cf. Hist. eccl. V, 10, 3). <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

In later tradition, as from the Middle Ages, the account of his death by flaying became very popular. Only think of the\u00a0famous\u00a0scene of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel in which Michelangelo painted St Bartholomew, who is holding his own skin in his left hand, on which the artist left his self-portrait. <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

St Bartholomew’s relics are venerated here in Rome in the Church dedicated to him on the Tiber Island, where they are said to have been brought by the German Emperor Otto III in the year 983. <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

To conclude, we can say that despite the scarcity of information about him, St Bartholomew stands before us to tell us that attachment to Jesus can also be lived and witnessed to without performing sensational deeds. Jesus himself, to whom each one of us is called to dedicate his or her own life and death, is and remains extraordinary. <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This and more in The Apostles<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0 A fellow from Michigan wrote me yesterday to say he’s going to an attempt an adult ed discussion group on the book, using my study guide. Hooray! One out of..what…2000 parishes? Excellent!<\/p>\n

The image on the sidebar on the left is, of course, from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment <\/em>in the Sistine <\/a> Chapel. It’s the image of Bartholomew everyone knows, but also worth knowing about is the statue of him that stands in St. John Lateran – the\u00a0nave of the church is lined with enormous statues of the apostles<\/a>, each holding the instrument (or in this case, the result) of his death. (click\u00a0on image to get\u00a0a larger view, which is still not great. Sorry.) \u00a0The statue is by Pierre Le Gros the Younger<\/a>, who is also responsible for (among many other works) the fantastic right altarpiece at the Gesu in Rome <\/a>of Religion Overthrowing Heresy<\/a>. <\/em>He also did a quite fascinating piece, of The Death of St Stanislas Kostka <\/a><\/em>for the Jesuit novitiate at Sant’Andrea al Quirinale.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nIs this in an area open to the public or not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From his series on the apostles, Pope Benedict on Bartholomew, traditionally associated with Nathanael, \u00a0last October: His heart is moved by Jesus’ words, he feels understood and he understands: “This man knows everything about me, he knows and is familiar with the road of life; I can truly trust this man”. And so he answers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nSt. Bartholomew..and others - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/st-bartholomewand-others.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"St. Bartholomew..and others - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From his series on the apostles, Pope Benedict on Bartholomew, traditionally associated with Nathanael, \u00a0last October: His heart is moved by Jesus’ words, he feels understood and he understands: “This man knows everything about me, he knows and is familiar with the road of life; I can truly trust this man”. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}