August 24
Saint Bartholomew the Apostle
art by Rev. Kirsten Kohr of Geneva, Ohio Almighty and everlasting God, who gave to your apostle Bartholomew grace truly to believe and to preach your Word: Grant that your church may love what he believed and preach what he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Bartholomew is one of the twelve Apostles known in the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke only by name. His name means “Son of Tolmai,” and he is sometimes identified with Nathanael, the friend of Philip, the “Israelite without guile” in John’s Gospel, to whom Jesus promised the vision of angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
There is a tradition that Bartholomew traveled to India, and Eusebius reports that when Pantaenus of Alexandria visited India, between 150 and 200, he found there “the Gospel according to Matthew” in Hebrew, which had been left behind by “Bartholomew, one of the Apostles.”
An ancient tradition maintains that Bartholomew was flayed alive at Albanopolis in Armenia.
Excerpted directly from “Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2022,” p. 368-369.
