+[Rev.21:9b-14; Jn1:45-51 The encounter in today’s gospel between Jesus and Nathanael or as we know him, Bartholomew, gives us a beautiful key to holiness in our lives as it was in the lives of the first apostles. Jesus, telling Philip that Bartholomew is a true child of Israel, that there is no duplicity in him and then that he saw him under a fig tree even before Philip called him, showed him just how close God is to us, so that even our inmost thoughts are known.
If any one of us lets himself or herself to live in this kind of awareness, of our being continually in God’s presence, to where our inmost thoughts are open and clear in God’s sight, we will find ourselves living in the truth, see ourselves for who we really are. Not only is this revealing, it is liberating, for then we are living in Gods’ very own light. We will become like the holy city coming down out of heaven, clear as crystal we heard about in the first reading from the book of Revelation. This is truly to live in the liberty of the children of God, and to have eyes opened to all that God is doing in the world around us even as Bartholomew was to experience when he saw the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.