DAILY- HOMILY

We know very little about St. Bartholomew, other than that he is probably the same Apostle that the Evangelist John calls Nathaniel. If Bartholomew and Nathaniel are indeed whom Jesus paid an extraordinary compliment. Jesus called one and the same person, we have one other bit of certain knowledge about him. He was a man of integrity, a man to him "a man without guile," a man incapable of deceit.

To how many people in today's world can we offer such a compliment? Think of the number of times we all put on false faces to try to make ourselves impressive. Think how often we play around with words to hide or alter the truth, to mislead those with whom we're speaking.

Dishonesty appears to be a fact of life throughout society. Student surveys show that cheating is widely practiced in schools. Students cheat, apparently unaware that cheating is immoral. The same might be said of the corporate officials of companies like Enron, Worldcom, etc. One wonders whether these officials had any sense at all of the evil they were doing, endangering the jobs and the pension plans of rank and file employees.

Jesus thought guilelessness, integrity to be a value. When he found a guileless person he complimented him. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if Jesus were to call us men and women without guile, men and women of integrity!