FORTY-NINTH SERMON
ON THE HOLY APOSTLE ST. BARTHOLOMEW.
Subject.
St. Bartholomew was, before all the other apostles, a most glorious and illustrious martyr of Christ. Preached on the feast of St. Bartholomew.
Text.
" He chose . . . Bartholomew." (Luke 13:14)
Introduction.
It is already a great distinction for Bartholomew to be selected, in preference to so many others, to join that company of men whom Our Lord Himself had chosen from all eternity to be His helpers in the great and holy work of the redemption; I mean those twelve to whom He gave the title of Apostles, of men sent by Him, and to whom, during His life on earth, He revealed the most hidden secrets and decrees of Providence; nay, to whom He opened His own heart, and to whom He left, after His ascent into heaven, full power to rule the work so laboriously begun by Him, His newly-established Church, and to spread it through out the world. For what could be said more in praise of any mere mortal than that he was chosen to perform such an important and sublime duty, appointed to such a divine office by the God of infinite wisdom, who is so foreseeing in the choice He makes? Yet perhaps this privilege might be looked on as an act of sheer generosity, an unmerited favor bestowed by Our Lord. Much more, then, does our holy apostle deserve praise, because, as far as he could, he made himself worthy, by a virtuous and exemplary life, to be raised to this high dignity. For according to the most celebrated historians Bartholomew was that renowned disciple Nathanael, who, as the gospel tells us, at his first calling merited to be praised and publicly lauded by Christ, the eternal Truth, as a true Israelite, in whom there was no guile or deception, nor anything worthy of blame. But, in my opinion, the chief praise of this great apostle consists in this, that as he was dignified by Our Lord with the office of apostle, so he brought to Christ, his Master and Redeemer, special and extraordinary honor, praise, and glory, as well in his apostolate and while preaching the gospel as in his martyrdom, and by the constancy with which he endured the most cruel and inhuman torments; so that with just reason he is called, in preference to the other apostles, a most glorious and illustrious martyr of Christ in his sufferings, and therefore is deserving of admiration and praise. There you have the matter of this panegyric.
Plan of Discourse.
St. Bartholomew, in his martyrdom, was a most glorious and illustrious martyr of Christ, in preference to the other apostles: such is the whole subject. The moral lesson shall be that as we are not worthy of martyrdom, yet, after the example of St. Bartholomew, we should at least honor Our Lord by constancy in bearing trials, and by mortification and chastising the flesh.
Help us to do this by Thy powerful grace, Christ Jesus, King of martyrs; this we beg of Thee through the merits of Thy holy Mother, Mary, and of the holy angels.
Of course all the elements, and all lifeless and senseless creatures give their Creator honor and glory by doing, according to their nature, in their different ways, that for which the divine omnipotence has called them into being; nor is there a blade of grass so worthless, a grain of sand so small as not to pay its Creator the due meed of service and honor by doing the work for which God created it, and proclaiming His majesty. Yet these creatures show forth the divine honor still clearer when, at a single sign on the part of God, they either restrain their natural movements or allow themselves to be used to produce effects that are extraordinary and contrary to their nature. Thus never did the sea proclaim more wonderfully the power of its Creator than on the day when, at the command of God, it divided, so that its waves, quite in opposition to their natural movement, heaped themselves up like a wall on either side, to make for the Israelites, pursued by Pharao, a way by which they might pass dry-shod through its hitherto untrodden depths. "Let us sing to the Lord, for He is gloriously magnified," they sang with one voice when they beheld this wonder. Never did fire better proclaim the honor of God and show its obedience to Him than when in the Babylonian furnace it restrained its sevenfold fury, and not only did not the least injury to the three Hebrew youths, but even appeared to them as a cooling breeze, as a most refreshing air. The proud Nebuchadnezzar could not restrain his astonishment at this; he " was astonished," says the Scripture, "and rose up in haste . . . and breaking forth, said: Blessed be their God . . . who hath delivered His servants that believed in Him." Never did the winds give greater praise to their Creator than when, being on the point of overwhelming all with their impetuosity, they, at a single word of Christ, allayed their fury and became tranquil. All who were present knew not how to give expression to their wonder and awe: " Who being afraid, wondered, saying one to another: Who is this, think you, that He commandeth both the winds and the sea, and they obey Him?" Are not those wonderful effects, produced by senseless and lifeless creatures at the command of their Creator, irrefragable proofs, sufficient to convince even the most obdurate of the unlimited power of the Almighty, and of the right He has to our praise and adoration? But why should I delay long on what such lifeless things do to honor their God by extraordinary effects, and by acting contrary to their nature, as if they could even thus add much to His honor? They are, after all, but senseless tools, compelled by a force they cannot resist to do this or that in opposition to their natural tendencies.
Reasoning men, endowed with free will, ye brave and faithful servants of God, and you, especially, heroic martyrs of Christ, you indeed show far more honor to the Divine Majesty, far more glory and homage, when with your own free will and choice, for the sake of God's glory, you fight against yourselves, freely conquer your own natural inclinations, sacrifice goods and life for His honor and glory, and go cheerfully to torments and death, against which your nature struggles most violently, impelled solely by your desire to prove to the world your love for God. These are wonders of the grace of God, by which His perfections are most clearly shown forth; these are heroic exploits of human weakness, strengthened by grace, which compel the admiration even of the angels; these are the victories and conquests that God Himself looks on as His own triumphs, and in which He places His honor and glory, as St. Jerome says: " The sufferings of the martyrs and the blood they shed are the triumphs gained by God." In a word, these are the most glorious proofs that a reasoning creature can give of his adoration and reverence for the infinite, divine Majesty. Therefore the holy Fathers prefer martyrdom to all acts and practises of virtue, and praise it as the greatest proof of charity. " Of all virtuous acts," says St. Thomas of Aquin, " martyrdom especially shows the perfection of charity; " for we prove our love for anything most of all by giving up for its sake that which we should otherwise most love, and select what we should otherwise most abhor. Now it is certain that of all the goods of this life there is none we love more than life itself, and nothing we hate more than death, especially a painful death; hence it is evident that the sufferings of the martyrs are more perfect than all other acts of human virtue, and are a proof of the greatest love, according to the words of Christ: "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." J This is the reason why they who shed their blood and give their lives for Christ are called martyrs, that is, witnesses of blood; because by shedding their blood they prove to the whole world, and publicly profess that the infinite and priceless majesty and goodness of God are such that for their sake one ought to be ready to do, abandon, suffer, and endure all. It was these heroic witnesses who most promoted the glory of Christ on earth, who spread His doctrine and law throughout the world, and who preached His name, often with tongues cut out or silenced in death, most powerfully of all to the heathens and infidels of the world.
Now I think we may say of all the holy apostles that they were not only martyrs of Christ, but even among the martyrs the highest place belongs to them. For in addition to the fact that during the life of Christ they shared to some extent in His persecutions and sufferings for His sake, they were the chief of those who preached the gospel of Christ throughout the world, and they were the first to testify to its truth by the sacrifice of their lives, so that, as it were, the whole earth was moistened with their blood, and they were almost the first to give the heroic example of suffering martyrdom; so that, as they were placed by Our Lord as the heads of Christianity and the examples of all virtue, and should be regarded by us in that light, so also, in the same degree, we must consider them as our patterns in patiently bearing torments and afflictions for the name of Christ, and we honor them as the chiefs of the martyrs. With reason does St. John Chrysostom add this to the other praises of the apostles: You are they who gave the example of constancy to the martyrs, who encouraged them in their sufferings, inflamed them with zeal for the divine honor, and made them invincible, in spite of the tortures they had to endure. Yes, holy apostles, this can be said of you alone, that you are, as it were, the crown, the ornament, and pattern of all the martyrs, and as their blood is the seed of Christianity, according to Tertullian, so we may say of you that the blood you shed for Christ was the seed that produced so many martyrs in the Church of Christ, which, like a fruitful field, was fertilized by your blood.
Yet as far as martyrdom is concerned, permit me to give Bartholomew the preference above you all, and allow me to assert boldly that he was the most illustrious and glorious martyr of Christ, your Master, and the one who gave Him most honor and glory in his sufferings. Why so? Mark this, my dear brethren. There is no doubt that the hero procures greater renown and honor for the king under whose banner he fights the greater and more powerful the enemy whom he contends with and subdues; for the might of the hostile force and the opposition made is, as it were, the test of the glory obtained by victory, and therefore of the honor gained by the sovereign. In the same way it cannot be denied that that martyr gave more glory to Christ, his heavenly King, and gained the brightest crown and palm of victory, who endured with fortitude even to death the most atrocious, cruel, and long-continued torments; for in this respect it is the same with the valiant warrior and the constant and brave sufferer. Now which of the apostles had to endure such a cruel, difficult, and protracted martyrdom as St. Bartholomew? Truly, it was a hard thing to offer one's neck freely to the sword, or to the axe, as did St. Paul, St. James the Great, SS. Judas and Matthias; a hard thing to offer one's body to the cross, as SS. Peter, An drew, and Philip did; a hard thing to expose one's breast to the hostile lance violently thrust against it with deadly intent, as did the holy apostles Thomas and Matthew, or to stretch out the body and allow one's self to be sawed asunder, as did St. Simon; or, finally, to have the head shattered by a blow of a club, as was the case with the holy apostle James the Less. All these were indeed glorious and wonderful martyrdoms, from which Christ, the Leader and King, drew more honor and glory the more His holy name was thereby made known and honored throughout the world. Yet these torments and modes of death were riot as unusual, nor as cruel and inhuman, nor as protracted as were the sufferings and death of St. Bartholomew. God indeed wished to be honored by the constancy and the blood of all the apostles; yet it seems that He chose Bartholomew in a special manner, in order to show the world, by his invincible courage, what a true disciple and follower of Christ can do and suffer. For him He reserved an extraordinary combat, a most glorious victory, in which he wished to triumph over the worst efforts of human cruelty and violence.
I will not now dwell on all that this holy apostle did during life for the honor of his Saviour; how he travelled through many vast countries and kingdoms through Asia Minor, Arabia, India, Morocco, Phrygia, Mesopotamia, Armenia everywhere preaching and sowing the seed of the Christian faith amid many persecutions. For as Nicetas, an ancient writer, says in his panegyric of St. Bartholomew: " What tongue can narrate the journeyings and wanderings, the dangers, the labors, the flights, the wounds, the prisons, the scourgings, the stonings, the revilings he endured? Who can relate how often he was brought before judges, accused be fore magistrates, calumniated, insulted, harassed, burnt, flogged, torn, and mangled?" There you have a short sketch of all the torments and trials that Bartholomew had to contend with. Would not almost any one of them have sufficed to gain a glorious crown of martyrdom for him? But all that we have heard hitherto was but a preparation and prelude to the chief combat he had to sustain. Bartholomew was chosen and selected by God for no ordinary martyrdom, for no simple victory, but for an extraordinary and manifold combat. In the town of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, he was nailed to a cross with Philip, his fellow-apostle. If he had then, like Philip, given up his heroic spirit he would have been looked on as a martyr equal to Philip, Peter, and An drew; but that palm-branch was too small for him; and there fore God so ordained that his tormentors, terrified by a sudden earthquake, took him down from the cross while still living, and thus prolonged his life for further tortures. If Bartholomew had had nothing more to suffer than decapitation, his glorious soul would have ascended to heaven, and he would have shared in the crown of St. James the Great, St. Paul, and St. Matthew; but in that case he would have suffered only in one part of his body, while the will of God was for him to suffer and conquer in his whole body, in every part and member of it. Had he died on the cross he would have endured only one kind of martyrdom, where as almost countless kinds were ordained for him from above, that, proved and perfected by so many tokens of victory, he might make his heroism clearer, and give greater glory to God in his last combat, in which he alone was to fight in the place of many, and by an unheard-of bravery to conquer cruelty itself.
I say cruelty itself; for what could be imagined more inhuman. atrocious, or painful than that barbarous flaying, by which, as all the world knows, he was pat to death by the order of the cruel Astyages? What fearful tortures, what intolerable agony is comprised in that one word! Fastidious Christians, what do you say or think of the ideas that word brings to your minds? Ah, the prick of a needle seems too much for you to bear; and if the plaster is taken off a small wound somewhat roughly, how you shriek in agony! And if a small piece of proud flesh has to be cut off a finger, what pain it causes! The mere anticipation of the surgeon's visit to cure you, the bare sight of his instruments makes you tremble and shake with dread! And what is it all compared to what St. Bartholomew had to suffer? For they took the skin away, not from a corrupting limb, but from the whole healthy body, from head to foot, and that, too, without any mercy, but with the utmost ferocity, violence, and hatred. If you can endure it, try to imagine what a terrible sight it must have been for the holy apostle to look at the sharp knives lying there before him, and to see the barbarous executioners, inflamed with diabolical rage, running up to flay him as if he were a dead animal! I dare not paint this picture to you in too vivid colors, because the very idea of it is repugnant to nature; I will content myself with the words of the gifted Louis of Granada: When the executioners had bound the holy man to a post, or, as some will have it, to across, in such a manner that he could not move a limb, they fell upon him with the utmost ferocity, and vied with one another in glutting their cruelty on him, " They stripped him," says Louis, "and then, to get through their work more conveniently, they began to cut furrows here and there in his flesh, and opened the way, with their knives, be tween the skin and the flesh; they then cut in still deeper, pulling off the skin with one hand, and with the other holding the knife pressed so as to separate the skin from the flesh; in this barbarous manner they tore the body of the holy man, lacerating his back and breast, his arms, legs, and thighs; " in a word, they mangled his every limb. Gracious God, who can describe the pain and anguish caused by such an extraordinary, manifold, and protracted martyrdom! As to its being extraordinary, the above quoted author says that such a mode of torment could have been suggested only by the powers of hell to the tyrant Astyages. Of the manifold torment it caused he says: " When Bartholomew offered his skin to the torture, he offered every member of his body, and he suffered as many cruel deaths as there were members to be flayed by the executioners." Finally, I will allow yourselves to judge how protracted his martyrdom must have been; you may know, perhaps, how long it takes to skin a beast that has been slaughtered. Seneca tells us of a Roman tyrant, who, to glut his cruelty, ordered one who had been condemned to death to be executed in such a manner that he might feel death. In the same barbarous fashion did Astyages treat our Saint in condemning him to such a long-continued martyrdom. And indeed not only was Bartholomew flayed alive, but he lived in that state till the next day, and therefore suffered as many martyrdoms in each limb as there were moments in the time during which he lived after the executioners had done their bloody work. So that I can well conclude with the same author: " This mode of death tortured the apostle most cruelly by the agony it caused him, by its extraordinary nature, and by the length of time it took."
And how did the holy man behave under those torments? He did not even change the expression of his face, nor lay aside for a moment his natural cheerfulness and joy of heart, as our author says. Not the least word of complaint escaped his lips, nor did he betray any sign of inward suffering. Instead of complaining, he rejoiced and exulted as if the greatest good fortune had befallen him, or the highest honor he could wish for had been conferred on him. " The divine apostle looked on his bleeding body as a royal garment, and on his executioners as the workmen who were fashioning his crown; he considered his lacerated flesh as a holocaust and living sacrifice pleasing to God; and fixing the eyes of his mind on the picture of his crucified Redeemer, he triumphed, with an incredible feeling of consolation, at beholding himself approaching more to the resemblance of Christ by the death he was suffering, and giving back his own blood for the blood by which he was redeemed," and thus made a return to Our Lord as far as he could. Still more wonderful is what St. Vincent writes of him; namely, that after the flaying was completed, he took the skin that had been torn from his body and placed it round his neck, like the stole of a priest, and thus ascended an elevated place, as if it were a pulpit, and there, with even more animation than usual, and in a loud voice, preached Christ and His holy gospel. Be that as it may, I find all authors agreed in this, that after the completion of his martyrdom the holy apostle continued undauntedly to preach the doctrine of Christ; although under the circumstances words were not necessary, since the torrents of blood that flowed from him announced sufficiently the truth of the doctrine he professed, and were in themselves a proof convincing enough for even the hardest hearts. And this very heroic constancy so enraged the tyrant Astyages, that, seeing that martyrdom could not daunt the courage or take away the life of the apostle nay, that it rather added to his firmness and zeal in preaching Christ, so that many were converted by the spectacle he ordered him to be beheaded on the following day, that his own cruelty might no longer be defied by the constancy of the apostle, as Peter de Natalibus tells us.
My dear brethren, if Christ is crowned in the sufferings of all the martyrs, because He is the source of victory to them all, as
Bruno says, what a glorious crown of honor He must have
received from the incomparable triumph of this invincible martyr! What glory accrued therefrom to the name of Christ! what renown to the whole Church! And if every drop of blood shed by the holy martyrs is a seed of new Christians, as we have seen already, who will be surprised to learn that by the copious torrents of blood shed by St. Bartholomew, not only did the Christians of the place receive new courage and strength, but multitudes of heathens, as we read in his Life, were converted on the spot to the true faith. Thus the cruel bath of blood by which the tyrant hoped to extinguish and destroy the faith was but a means of adding notably to its adherents. Finally, if all the martyrs when they suffer present an agreeable spectacle to heaven and its inhabitants, what joy must they not have felt at seeing this courageous servant and disciple of Christ enduring so bravely and constantly such a dreadful martyrdom! Seneca, considering the patience of a just man under adversity, cries out: " Behold a sight worthy of the attention of God Himself! " With greater reason may I say of the martyrdom of Bartholomew: Be hold a sight in which heaven finds joy, and God Himself pleasure and satisfaction! In truth, if Our Lord showed such extra ordinary satisfaction at the charity of St. Martin, when the latter divided his cloak with a poor man, as to appear to Martin the following night, and say, as if touched, to a multitude of angels: Martin, while still a catechumen covered Me with this garment, how incomparably greater must not have been the pleasure He felt when Bartholomew, out of sheer love for Him, allowed the skin to be torn off his body, that he might honor Our Lord therewith as with a purple mantle, and as a sign of virtue?
This joy that Christ experienced in the constancy of His servant was the reason of His conferring on him great graces, both during his martyrdom and after his death. Not without reason does the learned Cardinal Baronius express his astonishment and his inability to understand how a man, after suffering so terribly as Bartholomew did in his martyrdom, could still preserve his life; for the intensity of the agony he endured and the loss of blood should have been enough to kill him. Still more amazing is it that the holy apostle of Christ not only endured his torments till the bitter end, but even continued for a whole day after to preach with mangled and bleeding body, and to announce Christ to the heathens, so that the tyrant, finding himself unable to conquer his dauntless spirit by the cruel flaying, was forced to have him decapitated in order to put him to death. Yes, I acknowledge that this is, humanly speaking, impossible; and from that very fact I conclude that God must have had an extraordinary satisfaction in the constancy of Bartholomew, for He prolonged the martyr's life by an evident miracle, partly to increase His own glory in the sight of the world, and partly to add to the martyr's merits and his future glory. And for this reason historians are of opinion that in some churches the feast of St. Bartholomew is held on this date the 24th of this month and also on the following day -the 25th as well, so as to celebrate the constancy with which he endured the flaying and also his decapitation, that thus both the combats he sustained might be duly honored in the Christian world. Still more evidently did God reward his firmness, for in miraculously prolonging his life He not only filled the martyr with greater interior consolation but also opened heaven before his eyes, and sent angels to comfort and strengthen him in his torments and to invite him to the eternal glory prepared for him; and when he was be headed the angels brought his heroic soul into everlasting joys; so writes Nicetas in his panegyric. happy soul, that formed such a pleasing sight to heaven, go and receive the reward of thy bravery; go to be crowned by Him for whom thou hast fought so valiantly! Thou hast by thy sufferings on earth honored thy Saviour and thy God; rejoice now, happy soul; everlasting shall be the honor and glory that thou shalt receive as a reward in heaven! For all eternity shalt thou see and experience in thyself the truth of the words of the divine promise: " Who soever shall glorify Me him will I glorify."
Not the soul alone of this glorious disciple, but his body also received this reward; for as it had suffered and fought so well for Him, Our Lord endowed it with extraordinary glory in recompense for the torments it endured. I should never come to an end if I were to narrate all the miracles wrought at the apostle's shrine immediately after his death. They were so numerous, and so much honor was shown the sacred body by the surrounding people, that the barbarous heathens could no longer bear to see crowds flocking to and from the shrine, some deformed and crippled, others returning thanks for being healed; and they became so enraged that they took the leaden, or, as others say, stone coffin in which the martyr's remains were interred, and four other coffins, containing the bodies of other holy martyrs, and threw them all into the sea, in the hope of thus making the people forget the apostle and cease to show him the honor they had hitherto paid him. But this madness of theirs and their attempt to sink the body only added to the apostle's glory before the world. Hardly had the coffin touched the water when the senseless element seemed as if it wished to let all understand that it appreciated the valuable treasure confided to it, and to the great astonishment of the spectators it received the sacred relic with reverence into its waves, and not only did not allow it to sink into the depths, but even bore it on the surface, heavy as it was, and with the other coffins, two on each side of that of the apostle, as if accompanying their superior, conveyed it from Armenia towards Sicily, to the Lipari islands; as we learn from St. Theodore Studita, St. Gregory of Tours, Nicetas, and others, and as we may read in detail in the Antwerp Lives of the Saints. But this was not an end of the wonders: that the island so favored by the arrival of the sacred relic might realize the value of the treasure it received, a volcano that used to vomit fire was at once removed from the island by an arm of the sea, so that it could do no more harm to the place which the apostle had taken under his protection. miracle of miracles! cries out Nicetas; most wonderful of prodigies! Was ever anything like it seen under the sun before? I dare not dwell longer on the miracles wrought at the shrine of this holy apostle, as well in the island of Lipari, where they were of almost daily occurrence, as afterwards in Benevento and Rome, when the sacred relics had been brought thither. Thus did Our Lord honor the faithful servant who had so honored Him by his sufferings.
Now if the lifeless body of the apostle was so gloriously exalted before the world, what glory may he not expect on the day of general judgment, when that body shall be again united to the soul that strengthened it so bravely for the combat? With what beauty and light will it not be adorned above others? For if, according to the teaching of St. Augustine, St. Thomas of Villanova, and other theologians, "as Christ retained the marks of His wounds after His resurrection, so also shall the wounds of the holy martyrs remain for their adornment, honor, and glory; for they shall shine with those wounds as with so many diamonds and precious stones," as St. Thomas says how glorious, then, shall not be the body of our most glorious martyr! " What a sight it will be," exclaims St. Augustine in astonishment, "to behold St. Bartholomew, whose whole body was flayed, shining so brilliantly that he will seem to surpass the splendor of the most precious purple!" He will shine like the sun among the stars. "The greater the wounds that brave men bear in their bodies," says Sidonius Apollinaris, " the greater praise is due to them." Is it not an honor and glory for soldiers, when they return from a victory, to be able to point to the wounds they have received for king and country? " They glory in their wounds," says Seneca, "and point to the blood which redounds to their honor; and although they who escaped all wounds may also have performed heroic exploits, yet it is they who have been wounded who attract the most attention." For their wounds are undoubted proof of their valor; and hence they are praised, admired, and honored more than the others. How great, then, must not be the honor due to our Saint, what admiration will he not excite among angels, men, and even demons when he shows the bleeding skin that he allowed to be torn off his body for the name and honor of Christ, his heavenly King! (Fastidious Christians, who now care for your bodies so tenderly, what will you then be able to point to as having been done or suffered by you for your God? Where will you be able to hide your shame when you behold the glorious trophies brought from the combat by St. Bartholomew and other martyrs in honor of Christ, whereas you by your luxurious lives have only dishonored Him?) Now if the honor and glory of this apostle will be so great on the last day when he points to his mangled body as the sign of his victory, how exceedingly rich and copious will not the reward be that he will receive in all eternity! "For," says St. Thomas of Villanova, " if he who gives a cup of cold water for Christ's sake shall receive a reward from God, what glory will not be theirs who shed every drop of their blood, and suffered a most cruel death for His sake?" Who can describe, nay, who can under stand the joy reserved for those who suffered such pain, and for thee, especially, holy St. Bartholomew, glorious martyr and apostle, who in the flaying thou didst so valorously sustain didst shed, as it were, every drop of thy blood? How great will not be the recompense bestowed on thee by the God of infinite generosity for the bitter torments thou didst suffer for His honor? We congratulate thee with all our hearts, and praise and glorify God, who has prepared for His servants who have endured temporal pain for His sake such an abundant, incomprehensible, endless, and eternal happiness and bliss.
But, my dear brethren, to come to ourselves, what have we to expect after this life? Can we console ourselves with the hope of enjoying in the general resurrection such renown before the divine tribunal, such glory, such a great, eternal reward? Yes, we would indeed desire that; but where are the trophies of the victories we have gained for Christ? Where the wounds we have suffered for Him? Where the instruments of torture that we may point to, like Bartholomew, as the proofs of our sufferings? Yet what do I say of wounds and torture? Many shudder at the bare name of such things. Meanwhile it is and remains true, there is no other way to attain to that reward but the way of suffering; this is what Christ Himself has shown us by His example; this is the way that Bartholomew and all the other apostles and disciples of Christ, nay, all the saints have been obliged to follow. Never shall that divine sentence be convicted of falsehood: "Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God. Under no other condition is eternal glory bequeathed to us, as we learn from St. Paul: "Heirs indeed of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; yet so if we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him." How I pity you, then, weak and luxurious Christians, whose sole care is for your bodily comfort and sensual gratification! You who fear and avoid nothing more than what can hurt the flesh, and desire nothing but what can delight it; who give to your palates all that can please them, to your eyes all liberty to look on agreeable objects, to your ears all the delights of hearing, to the smell pleasing perfumes, to the touch all that is soft and luxurious. You who, in a word, seek for bodily pleasures and sensual delights, while you shun with the utmost care all that savors of pain and sorrow as if it were a plague. You may easily judge for yourselves the amount of honor and glory you give the Almighty by your luxurious and easy manner of life, and can from that see what praise you will have from Him on the day of judgment and what reward in eternity. Hear the sentence pronounced by the angel in the Apocalypse on the luxurious city of Babylon: " As much as she hath glorified her self and lived in delicacies, so much torment and sorrow give ye to her." And this is the meaning of that terrible we pronounced by Our Lord on the voluptuous in the gospel of St. Luke: " Wo to you that are rich, for you have your consolation. Wo to you that are filled, for you shall hunger. Wo to you that now laugh, for you shall mourn and weep."
No Christians; if we wish to share with Bartholomew in his reward and eternal glory we must also share in his sufferings. "The mind," says St. Gregory, "is pleased to think of the greatness of the reward; but it must not be frightened by the struggle of the combat; " if we are pleased at the thought of the exceeding great recompense prepared for the martyrs of Christ by the Lord, we, too, should not allow ourselves to be frightened by the difficulty and labor of the strife. In a word, if we desire to go to heaven we must travel by the road that leads to heaven. But this is, as we have seen, no other than suffering for God and His honor; either suffering from violence, like Bartholomew and other martyrs who were tortured by tyrants, or else by voluntary mortification, penance, and patiently bearing the crosses laid on us by Providence. God be praised that we have not now to combat against raging tyrants, threatening to cut off our heads with the sword, or to take our lives by the wheel or gallows, by fire or sword! (Oh, I fear that such threats would shake the constancy of many of us!) But precisely since God has made things so easy for us we must and should all the more earnestly take the knife in our hands and pierce our own flesh therewith, and all the more zealously restrain our inordinate inclinations, repress our carnal desires, tame and keep in check our outward senses,, be our own tormentors by voluntary mortifications, and accept cheerfully from the hands of God sickness, poverty, want, persecution, and whatever other trials we may have to bear. Thus we shall honor Christ like the martyrs by overcoming ourselves, and gain a glorious victory, and when the short combat is at an end we shall receive an eternal, immortal crown of glory in heaven. Yes, my dear brethren, such is our resolution. And what have we to suffer? Nothing, answers the Apostle, but " what is momentary and light;" and even that brings us " an eternal weight of glory. " It is light in comparison with the priceless glory and heavenly joys we may win by it; it is momentary in comparison with the long eternity in which we shall enjoy that bliss. Let others, then, pamper their flesh, and give their senses all freedom, delight, and pleasure; let them eat well, drink well, and sleep well, and laugh and amuse themselves; we will keep all our joy and pleasure for an other time for the time of resurrection and reward; here in our mortal bodies we are willing to suffer, so that hereafter we may receive them incorruptible and rejoice all the more. With this thought we will console ourselves, and say with the suffering Job: " I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God." Then shall my body be amply and abundantly repaid for what it now has to endure. Even if my skin were to be torn off like St. Bartholomew s, let it be so: " I shall be clothed again with my skin; " I shall receive it again; nor will that be all, for "in my flesh I shall see my God." In that flesh which is now mortified and chastened, which is now emaciated by hard work, abstinence, mortification, hunger, and thirst, in that flesh which is now tormented by sickness and pain in that I shall see my God, and find in Him my everlasting delight and joy. Yes, "this, my hope, is laid up in my bosom." With this do I console myself; to this I leave myself. Amen.