{"id":27128,"date":"2012-08-24T20:06:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T00:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2012\/08\/saint-bartholomew-1\/"},"modified":"2018-03-06T08:51:06","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T12:51:06","slug":"saint-bartholomew-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2012\/08\/saint-bartholomew-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Saint Bartholomew"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"St<\/a>Nathanael was one of Christ’s first converts,\u00a0yet his name does not occur again till the last chapter of St. John’s Gospel,\u00a0where he is mentioned in company with certain of the Apostles, to whom Christ appeared after His resurrection. Now, why should the call of Nathanael have\u00a0been recorded in the opening of the Gospel, among the acts of Christ in the\u00a0beginning of His Ministry, unless he was an Apostle? Philip, Peter, and Andrew,\u00a0who are mentioned at the same time, were all Apostles; and Nathanael’s name is\u00a0introduced without preface, as if familiar to a Christian reader. At the end of\u00a0the Gospel it appears again, and there too among Apostles. Besides, the\u00a0Apostles were the special witnesses of Christ, when He was risen. \u00a0He manifested Himself, “not to all the people,” says Peter, “but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him\u00a0after He rose from the dead.” [Acts x. 41.] Now, the occasion on which\u00a0Nathanael is mentioned, was one of these manifestations. “This is now the\u00a0third time,” says the Evangelist, “that Jesus was manifested to His\u00a0disciples, after that He was risen from the dead.” It was in the presence\u00a0of Nathanael, that He gave St. Peter his commission, and foretold his\u00a0martyrdom, and the prolonged life of St. John. All this leads us to conjecture\u00a0that Nathanael is one of the Apostles under another name. Now, he is not\u00a0Andrew, Peter, or Philip, for they are mentioned in connexion with him in the\u00a0first chapter of the Gospel; nor Thomas, James, or John, in whose company he is\u00a0found in the last chapter; nor Jude (as it would seem), because the name of\u00a0Jude occurs in St. John’s fourteenth chapter. Four Apostles remain, who are not named in his Gospel,–St. James the Less, St. Matthew, St. Simon, and St.\u00a0Bartholomew; of whom St. Matthew’s second name is known to have been Levi,\u00a0while St. James, being related, was not at any time a stranger to our Lord,\u00a0which Nathanael evidently was. If then Nathanael were an Apostle, he was either\u00a0Simon or Bartholomew. Now it is observable, that, according to St. John, Philip\u00a0brought Nathanael to Christ; therefore Nathanael and Philip were friends: while\u00a0in the other Gospels, in the list of Apostles, Philip is associated with Bartholomew; “Simon and Andrew, James and John, Philip and\u00a0Bartholomew.” [Matt. x. 3.] This is some evidence that \u00a0Bartholomew\u00a0and not Simon is the Nathanael of St. John. On the other hand, Matthias has\u00a0been suggested instead of either, his name meaning nearly the same as Nathanael\u00a0in the original language. However, since writers of some date decide in favour\u00a0of Bartholomew, I shall do the like in what follows.<\/p>\n

What then do we learn from\u00a0his recorded character and history? It affords us an instructive lesson. When\u00a0Philip told him that he had found the long-expected Messiah of whom Moses\u00a0wrote, Nathanael (that is, Bartholomew) at first doubted<\/b>. He was well read in\u00a0the Scriptures, and knew the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem; whereas Jesus\u00a0dwelt at Nazareth, which Nathanael supposed in consequence to be the place of\u00a0His birth,–and he knew of no particular promises attached to that city, which\u00a0was a place of evil report, and he thought no good could come out of it.<\/p>\n

Philip\u00a0told him to come and see; and he went to see, as a humble single-minded man sincerely desirous to get at the truth. In consequence, he was vouchsafed an\u00a0interview with our Saviour, and was converted.<\/p>\n

Blessed John Henry Newman
\nPlain and Parochial Sermons<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathanael was one of Christ’s first converts,\u00a0yet his name does not occur again till the last chapter of St. John’s Gospel,\u00a0where he is mentioned in company with certain of the Apostles, to whom Christ appeared after His resurrection. Now, why should the call of Nathanael have\u00a0been recorded in the opening of the Gospel, among the … Continue reading Saint Bartholomew<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2523,32259],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35030,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27128\/revisions\/35030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}