To Know God

Back in the 80's there was a popular TV show called Cheers, a place where everybody knows your name.   The poor Saint that we celebrate today can't say that about himself; not everybody knows his name.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke, he's known as Bartholomew.  But in John's gospel, the one we heard from today, he's called Nathaniel.  

Scholars don't quite have an explanation, but they say it is because in the story in the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Phillip brings Bartholomew to Jesus, and here we have, in John's Gospel, Phillip bringing Nathaniel to Jesus.

Nathaniel is one of the few people that Jesus pays a great compliment to.  He compliments his cousin John that nobody else was born of a woman greater than John.  In this section of the gospel He says of Nathaniel “Here is a true child of Israel.

There is no duplicity in him.”  High praise from Jesus! Then Jesus says I knew you; I saw you under the fig tree.  Nathaniel is amazed at this.

Perhaps as we hear the Gospel today, we can be aware of the fact that God knows us.  God is aware of us.  God calls us by name.  The challenge that we have is to learn to know God.

Monsignor Daniel Hoye