Homily | August 24, 2026 | Bartholomew And The Hidden Foundation | (Episode 244)

There are twelve names written on the foundations of heaven.

That is an extraordinary image Saint John gives us in the first reading today.

He sees the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God, and beneath that city are twelve foundation stones.

On those stones are written the names of the twelve apostles.

We know some of those names immediately, Peter, James, John, and Thomas.

But today the church asks us to remember one of those quieter names carved into that foundation, Bartholomew.

Today's his feast day.

And that name is worth thinking about because compared with some of the other apostles, we know remarkably little about him.

There's no gospel according to Bartholomew.

There's no letter of Bartholomew in the New Testament.

We do not have a great sermon of his recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

In fact, his name appears in the Gospels mainly in the list of the twelve.

And yet, according to Revelation, his name is carved into the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem.

There's something beautiful about that.

The church has traditionally identified Bartholomew with Nathaniel, the man we meet in today's gospel.

We cannot prove that identification with absolute certainty, but it is an ancient Christian tradition.

And if Bartholomew is Nathaniel, then the first thing we discover about this apostle is that he was not easily impressed.

Philip comes running to him excitedly.

We have found the one about whom Moses wrote.

And Nathaniel basically responds, Really?

Well, can anything good come from Nazareth?

I love that.

Because sometimes we imagine the apostles as stained glass windows, perfect men walking around with halos, waiting for Jesus to find them.

They were not.

They were humans, people who actually walk this earth.

Nathaniel is skeptical.

He has opinions, he has prejudices, he has already decided what God can do and where God can do it.

And Philip does not argue with him.

He simply says, Well, come and see.

And that changes everything.

Because when Nathaniel finally stands before Jesus, Jesus says something that stops him in his tracks.

He says, Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.

Well, we don't know what happened under the fig tree, and perhaps that's exactly why the sentence is so powerful.

Whatever did happen belonged to Nathaniel and God.

And Jesus is telling him, You think this is the first time we have met?

It isn't.

I already know you.

I saw you before you saw me.

Maybe that's a word somebody needs to hear today.

Because you came looking for God.

God was looking for you.

Before you walked into this church, he saw you.

Before you knew how to pray, he knew your name.

He saw the moments nobody else saw.

The questions, the disappointments, the sins, the sacrifices, the prayers you never told anybody you prayed.

The things that happened under your fig tree.

Well, Jesus says, I saw you.

And suddenly the skeptic becomes one of the great professions of faith in the gospel.

Bartholomew says, Rabbi, you are the Son of God.

You are the King of Israel.

That man becomes an apostle.

And then something fascinating happens.

He largely disappears from the biblical story.

But tradition tells us that Bartholomew carried the gospel far beyond Israel.

Ancient Christian sources connect his missionary activity with the lands to the east and Armenia.

Armenian Christians have long honored Bartholomew as one of the apostles who first brought the faith to them.

Tradition also remembers that he eventually gave his life for Christ in a horrific martyrdom.

He was flayed alive.

The man who once asked can anything good from Nazareth eventually became willing to die for the man from Nazareth.

Think about that.

Something happened between those two moments.

He came and saw, and what he saw changed everything.

Maybe that's why Bartholomew matters so much for us.

Most of us will never be famous.

Our names will never appear in a history book.

Most of the good we do will never be recorded anywhere.

But the kingdom of God has never been built only by famous people.

It has been built by men and women who encountered Jesus Christ, allowing themselves to be changed by him and then quietly gave him their lives.

That's why I keep coming back to the first reading.

At the end of the Bible, when Saint John sees heaven itself, Bartholomew's name is there, but not on a banner, not on a monument, on a foundation stone, hidden underneath everything else, holding something up.

Maybe that's holiness.

Not necessarily being noticed, not necessarily doing something spectacular, but allowing Christ to build something upon the gift of your life.

And it begins exactly where it began for Bartholomew.

Come and see.

Come and see who Christ really is.

Come and see what he can do with your life.

Come and see what happens when you stop telling God where he can and cannot be found.

Because long before you ever came looking for him, he already seen you.

And if you give him your life, one day you may discover that God was building something with it all along.

Amen.