A game of risk
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Many moons ago, when I was working for a major bank in their head office in London, England, I used to travel regularly to Milan, Italy, to audit a subsidiary there. Every evening I spent there, I would go to 5 o’clock Mass in the Duomo (cathedral), which was reckoned to be the third-largest church in the world — a kind of Renaissance mega-church. And the Duomo certainly was huge. When I walked through the massive, ornate doors of the building, the interior was so spacious that it felt like being outside, inside!
Many moons ago, when I was working for a major bank in their head office in London, England, I used to travel regularly to Milan, Italy, to audit a subsidiary there. Every evening I spent there, I would go to 5 o’clock Mass in the Duomo (cathedral), which was reckoned to be the third-largest church in the world — a kind of Renaissance mega-church. And the Duomo certainly was huge. When I walked through the massive, ornate doors of the building, the interior was so spacious that it felt like being outside, inside!
There were many startling and beautiful things in that church to look at, but one evening after Mass, I decided to leave by a different door, the one on the left of the altar. There, just by the door, was a marble statue I had never seen before. As I approached, my steps slowed and I came to a halt in front of it. What it depicted was St. Bartholomew, but the shocking thing about the statue is that the figure is flayed and is holding the discarded skin of his body draped round his shoulders. It was made all the more realistic because the color of the marble, in the gloomy penumbra of the church, looked exactly like pale and bloodless skin. I was intrigued and grossed out in equal measure.
St. Bartholomew, whose feast day is on the 24th of this month, was one of the Twelve Apostles. The story goes that after Jesus ascended into heaven, Bartholomew traveled east to India to preach the gospel and ended up in Greater Armenia. According to tradition, he was flayed and beheaded there for the crime of having converted the king to Christianity. He is often depicted in art flayed and holding his skin. If you study Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the end wall of the Sistine Chapel, in a similarly gruesome depiction, you see Bartholomew gripping onto the flayed skin — except that in this case the ghastly object is the skin of the artist himself.
What is so remarkable about this saint — apart from his grisly appearance in the Duomo? The same thing that distinguishes all of the apostles. Their fearless proclamation of the gospel in the face of persecution and certain martyrdom. In fact, all of them, except John, according to tradition, were crucified, beheaded, stabbed, flayed, or sawn in half.
Each of the apostles was on fire with the love of Jesus and wanted to share that love with others, despite opposition. This amazing courage is salutary for us and makes us ask the question whether we are too timid to share the gospel openly with family, with co-workers, or with friends. What motivated the apostles was love. They had encountered God in a very real way, in Jesus, and were determined to obey his Great Commission to preach the gospel and baptize people.
The same is true of those who came after the Twelve. The vast majority of early Christians had never even set eyes on Jesus. Yet they were prepared to suffer and die for the truth and to hold out the possibility of redemption to others.
The times in which we live are no less inimical to the gospel than in the Roman Empire. Given that, as Luke 12:48 reminds us, “to whom much is given, much shall be required,” how ready are we to share our relationship with God with other people? Let’s ask St. Bartholomew to send us even a fragment of his courage and to help us to spread the Good News as he did, as Jesus commanded us to do.
St. Bartholomew, pray for us!
Sean O’Neill is the editor of FAITH Magazine.
