Yes, where are the Catholics (let alone where are the saints) these days? Perhaps we can find a renewed strength of faith and perseverance in meditating on the memory of St. Bartolomeo, whose feast is today August 24th. His martyrdom might well have foreshadowed the present agony of the Catholic Church. What discerning member of the Mystical Body would deny that the Christian world is being stripped of its garments as brutally and dreadfully as was done to Christ in the 11th Station of the Cross?
Nathaniel Bar-Tolomei was born in Cana, Galilee, site of the renowned wedding attended by Jesus and His Mother. The miracle of the wine was witnessed by some of the disciples, including Philip who introduced Jesus to his friend “Bart.” He was later known as one of the “Holy Myrrh-bearers,” saints ever mindful of the memory of Good Friday. Bartholomew evangelized in polytheistic Mesopotamia, Hindu India, Zoroastrian Armenia and Persia. He converted the king of Armenia by casting out a demon from the “fire temple” and destroying its idols, Ahura Mazda in particular. The king’s enraged brother ordered Bartholomew to be flayed alive in 70 A.D.
Two centuries prior, Rome having been ravaged by a great plague, the Senate ordered construction of a temple to Aesculapius, god of healing and health. A maritime delegation brought the deity’s statue from its shrine in Greece to Rome’s Tiber Island, place of quarantine for the sick and dying. To commemorate the ship that brought Aesculapius to Rome, the island’s banks were covered in marble shaped to resemble prow and stern. In front of the temple, an obelisk looked like the “mast.”
Over the ruins of this temple, HRE Otto III built the Basilica of San Bartolomeo all’ Isola to house the holy relics of this saint. During the Middle Ages, the Church became a great pilgrimage site, St. Bart being known as a great healer of bodies and souls. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII had a hospital built next to the venerable Church. Tiber Island remains today a place of refuge and cure, the hospital still open and staffed by the Hospitalier Order of St. John.
Among the colossal statues of Apostles framing the nave of the Roman Basilica of St. John Lateran is St. Bart, timelessly offering a tanner’s knife and his own “hide” to the Lord. Across town in the Sistine Chapel, the same saint is featured with his skin draped over his arm in the 45-foot fresco of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Who’s to deny that he represents true disciples of the Church of the End Times, looking more and more like the stripped and torn body of Christ on Calvary?
Yes, where are the Catholics (let alone where are the saints) these days? Perhaps we can find a renewed strength of faith and perseverance in meditating on the memory of St. Bartolomeo, whose feast is today August 24th. His martyrdom might well have foreshadowed the present agony of the Catholic Church. What discerning member of the Mystical Body would deny that the Christian world is being stripped of its garments as brutally and dreadfully as was done to Christ in the 11th Station of the Cross?
Nathaniel Bar-Tolomei was born in Cana, Galilee, site of the renowned wedding attended by Jesus and His Mother. The miracle of the wine was witnessed by some of the disciples, including Philip who introduced Jesus to his friend “Bart.” He was later known as one of the “Holy Myrrh-bearers,” saints ever mindful of the memory of Good Friday. Bartholomew evangelized in polytheistic Mesopotamia, Hindu India, Zoroastrian Armenia and Persia. He converted the king of Armenia by casting out a demon from the “fire temple” and destroying its idols, Ahura Mazda in particular. The king’s enraged brother ordered Bartholomew to be flayed alive in 70 A.D.
Two centuries prior, Rome having been ravaged by a great plague, the Senate ordered construction of a temple to Aesculapius, god of healing and health. A maritime delegation brought the deity’s statue from its shrine in Greece to Rome’s Tiber Island, place of quarantine for the sick and dying. To commemorate the ship that brought Aesculapius to Rome, the island’s banks were covered in marble shaped to resemble prow and stern. In front of the temple, an obelisk looked like the “mast.”
Over the ruins of this temple, HRE Otto III built the Basilica of San Bartolomeo all’ Isola to house the holy relics of this saint. During the Middle Ages, the Church became a great pilgrimage site, St. Bart being known as a great healer of bodies and souls. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII had a hospital built next to the venerable Church. Tiber Island remains today a place of refuge and cure, the hospital still open and staffed by the Hospitalier Order of St. John.
Among the colossal statues of Apostles framing the nave of the Roman Basilica of St. John Lateran is St. Bart, timelessly offering a tanner’s knife and his own “hide” to the Lord. Across town in the Sistine Chapel, the same saint is featured with his skin draped over his arm in the 45-foot fresco of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Who’s to deny that he represents true disciples of the Church of the End Times, looking more and more like the stripped and torn body of Christ on Calvary?