Saint Bartholomew.
Artist: René de Cramer.
“Copyright Brunelmar/Ghent/Belgium”.
Used with Permission.
Illustration: UNA VOCE OF ORANGE COUNTY
English: Saint Bartholomew the Apostle.
By: Pierre Le Gros the Younger.
Nave of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, Rome.
Français: Saint Barthélemy par Pierre Le Gros le Jeune.
Nef de la basilique Saint-Jean-de-Latran, Rome.
Photo: 7 September 2006.
Source: Own work.
Author: Jastrow
(Wikimedia Commons)
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 14.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
A witness of The Son of God, one of the Princes who announced His Glory to the Nations, lights up this day with his Apostolic flame.
While his brethren of the Sacred College followed the human race into all the lands whither the migration of Nations had led it, Bartholomew appeared as the herald of the Lord at the very starting point, the mountains of Armenia, whence the sons of Noe spread over the Earth.
Ruins of the Saint Bartholomew Monastery at
the alleged site of the Apostle’s Martyrdom in Armenia.
Date: Circa 1913.
Source:
Bachmann, Walter (1913) “Kirchen und moscheen
in Armenien und Kurdistan”, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs.
Author: Bachmann, Walter.
(Wikimedia Commons)
There had the figurative Ark rested; humanity, everywhere else a wanderer, was there seated in stillness, remembering the Dove with its Olive Branch, and awaiting the consummation of the alliance signified by the rainbow which had there for the first time glittered in the clouds.
Behold, Blessed tidings awake in those valleys the echoes of ancient Traditions: Tidings of Peace, making the universal deluge of sin subside before the Wood of Salvation.
The serenity announced by the Dove of old, was now far outdone. Love was to take the place of punishment. The ambassador of Heaven showed God to the sons of Adam, as the most beautiful of their own brethren.
The noble heights whence formerly flowed the rivers of Paradise, were about to see the renewal of the covenant annulled in Eden, and the celebration, amid the joy of Heaven and Earth, of the Divine Nuptials so long expected, the union of the Word with regenerated humanity.
Personally, what was this Apostle whose Ministry borrowed such solemnity from the scene of his Apostolic labours ?
Under the name or surname of Bartholomew, [Editor: Son of Tholmaï] the only mark of recognition given him by the first three Gospels, are we to see, as many have thought, that Nathaniel, whose presentation to Jesus by Philip forms so sweet a scene in Saint John’s Gospel ?
A man full of uprightness, innocence, and simplicity, who was worthy to have had the Dove for his precursor, and for whom the Man-God had choice graces and caresses from the very beginning.
Artist: Peter Paul Rubens.
Date: Circa 1611.
Collection: Museo del Prado.
Source/Photographer:
(Wikimedia Commons)
Be this as it may, the lot which fell to our Saint among the twelve, points to the special confidence of the Divine Heart; the heroism of the terrible Martyrdom which sealed his Apostolate reveals his fidelity; the dignity preserved by the Nation he grafted on Christ, in all the Countries where it has been transplanted, witnesses to the excellence of the sap first infused into its Branches.
When, two Centuries and a half later, Gregory the Illuminator so successfully cultivated the soil of Armenia, he did but quicken the seed sown by the Apostle, which the trials never wanting to that generous land had retarded for a time, but could not stifle.
How strangely sad, that evil men, nurtured in the turmoil of endless invasions, should have been able to rouse and perpetuate a mistrust of Rome among a Race whom wars and tortures and dispersion could not tear from the love of Christ Our Saviour !
Yet, Thanks be to God !, the movement towards return, more than once begun and then abandoned, seems now to be steadily advancing; the chosen sons of this illustrious Nation are labouring perseveringly for so desirable a union, by dispelling the prejudices of her people; by revealing to our lands the treasures of her literature so truly Christian, and the magnificenses of her Liturgy; and above all by Praying and devoting themselves to the Monastic state under the standard of the Father of Western Monks. [Editor: Mekhitarists; Armenian Monks of Saint Benedict.]
Together with these holders of the true National Tradition, let us Pray to Bartholomew their Apostle; to the Disciple Thaddeus (one of the “seventy-two”), who also shared in the first evangelisation; to Ripsima, the heroic Virgin, who from the Roman territory led her thirty-five companions to the conquest of a new land; and to all the Martyrs whose blood cemented the building upon the only foundation set by Our Lord.
We learn from Eusebius and from Saint Jerome, that before going to Armenia, his final destination, Saint Bartholomew evangelised the Indies, where Pantænus a Century later found a copy of Saint Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew characters, left there by him.
Saint Denis records a profound saying of the Glorious Apostle, which he thus quotes and comments: “The Blessed Bartholomew says of theology, that it is at once abundant and succinct; of the Gospel, that it is vast in extent and at the same time concise; thus excellently giving us to understand that the Beneficent Cause of all beings reveals or manifests Himself by many words or by few, or even without any words at all, as being beyond and above all language or thought.
For He is above all by His superior essence.
Saint Bartholomew: Ora Pro Nobis.
