“CHRIST: NO GUILE JUST GIFT”
Saint John 1: 43-51
Saint Bartholomew : 27 August Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Jesus goes forth into Galilee because Philip and Bartholomew were lost. They had Old Testament Scripture but Jesus wanted them to have Himself in Body and Blood—flesh and word. The Lord wants you to receive His full embrace and nourishment too.
Like disbelieving Jews you were lost and alone and without a shepherd. Before He came and found you, all you could do was to sink deeper in the cold sewage of your sin. Your natural inclination is to be alone with your own admirers: your works, your accomplishments, your diversions, your mammon, and your flattering friends scratching your itching ears. Jesus won’t allow that. Jesus found the four Galilean fishermen and then He found Philip. And then He found Bartholomew by using the means of the friendship of Philip. Jesus loves you and cares about you and also uses real voices from real men to tell you: “we have Him…for you…here…the One Whom Moses in the first five books of the Bible, and the Prophets, did write…” “Come and see,” or rather, be here and hear, receive, eat and drink.
Your old nature wants only a “son of Joseph” someone like you that you can strive to be like, that you can pull down a bit for leveling (or at least pull down His Mother), and like the Jews, someone who is King David redux or Moses the sequel. But you receive The very Son of God: the Second perfect Adam.
Bartholomew (the Son of Tholomew) whose Christian name (first name) was Nathanael, was stubborn and resisting in his pride and hesitancy to just believe The Word as evangelized by Philip. But Jesus is correct: Bartholomew was an Israelite in whom there was no guile. That’s because Christ had predestined this man from Bethsaida to salvation IN HIM from before the universe began. Bartholomew was elected by Jesus’ love and mercy, just like all of you, and thus was “seen under the fig tree,” i.e. under the Church’s palm branches—under Jesus’ own pierced and Bloody hands and heart!
From being a lost and condemned creature, both you and Nathanael have been found and adopted and placed into the bosom of The Father by being in the Body of Jesus. Jesus forgives you your stubbornness and your unloving lukewarm-ness. Jesus takes you from being a Law focused, Moses-twisted, Pharisee and makes you one with the “12,” one with Nathanael and places His words on your tongue: “Rabbi, Thou art The Son of God, Thou art The King of Israel.”
The Lord now places more than His Word on your tongue—He places Himself in The Supper of Saints.
Come and see and hear heaven open. Come and join the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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