Homily for Friday, 24 August 2018‒ Feast of St. Bartholomew

Friday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; John 1:45-51

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What is the difference between a disciple and an apostle, and how are these related to each other? Please forgive me for a somewhat academic beginning to my reflection here but, for most of the year, I live in Paris as a doctoral student and, when I am not in Paris, I teach theology courses at St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

A disciple, from the Greek origin of this word, is a student. We might think of related words like “discipline,” which can mean either the necessary focus on a specific area of study, or the area of study itself. The simplest, most literal meaning of an apostle, again a word of Greek origin, is one who is sent out.

I like to think of my experience as a priest; in ministry; as a Christian as one of combining roles as a disciple and an apostle, a student drawn in to learn from experts and then one who is sent out to serve, to teach, and to draw other people to Jesus Christ. We hear today from John’s Gospel about the encounters between Philip and Nathanael and then Nathanael and Jesus, how Philip and Nathanael combine roles as disciples and apostles.

John introduces Philip to us as a newly-called disciple. He is Jesus’ newest student, and he is a straight-A student! Philip is quick to understand that his role will not only be a passive one as Jesus’ student, but an active one, an apostolic one, of seeking and attracting other disciples to the Lord. And so Philip immediately finds Nathanael, one whose standout characteristic is transparency: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” Jesus says later about Nathanael.

This new student in Jesus’ class, Nathaniel, is the type of person who is honest enough to ask questions that the other students and even the teacher may not want to hear but need to hear, like, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth”? Nathaniel’s question does not faze Philip, who understands Nathanael’s quality of character and fitness to be a disciple and then an apostle. “Come and see,” Philip says to Nathanael. Come and be a disciple of this Jesus of Nazareth, “about whom Moses wrote in the law and also the prophets wrote.”

Nathanael, to his credit, takes up Philip’s invitation to be Jesus’ disciple. He starts, as Philip did, as Jesus’ disciple, at a “come and see” invitation, and Jesus transforms him, as he did Philip, into an apostle: “You will see greater things than these.” It is almost as though Jesus says to Nathaniel, “Not only will you see greater things than what you are experiencing now, but I will send you out to attract still more people to these greater things; to God; to eternal life.”

Jesus and Philip the Apostle extend to us the same invitation as they once did Nathanael: First, “come and see,” and then go, be sent out to attract still more disciples to Christ. Seek out and attract those who will, without deceit, ask a difficult but necessary question in today’s world: “What good can come out of the Church; out of being a Christian today”? And then may we be the good that attracts to Christ good people, disciples who will be formed by Christ through us into apostles; people who will “come and see” and then be sent out ourselves to serve the Lord.