Saints of God! Lo, Jesu's people (St. Bartholomew)

Today, August 24th, is the Feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle.

Bartholomew was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He has been identified with Nathanael who appears in the Gospel according to John as being introduced to Christ by Philip (who would also become an apostle), although some modern commentators reject the identification of Nathanael with Bartholomew.

According to the Synaxarium of the Coptic Orthodox Church, his martyrdom is commemorated on the first day of the Coptic Calendar (i.e. the first day of the month of Thout), which currently falls on September 11 (corresponding to August 29 in the Julian Calendar). His feast is June 11 in Eastern Christianity and August 24 in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Anglican Communion and both forms of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.

The music for this hymn was composed by Johann Ludwig Steiner (1688-1771) and it is found in a Zurich collection of 1735. No other info is available about the composer, but the name of the attractive tune is "Gott Will's Machen".

The text is by Athelstan Riley (1858-1945). The hymn is an acrostic of the name "Saint Bartholomew," but can be used for the feast of any Apostle.

If you're not familiar with what an "acrostic" is is a poem (or other form of writing) in which the first letter (or syllable, or word) of each line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. So, if you "look down" the text, you'll see that the name "SAINT BARTHOLOMEW" is spelled out. :-)

Incidentally, the writer of the text, John Athelstan Riley (10 August 1858 – 17 November 1945) was an English hymn writer and translator. Born in Paddington, London, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford, where obtained his BA in 1881 and MA in 1883. He championed the development of the English Hymnal (1906) and his most well-known hymn is "Ye watchers and ye holy ones."

The score is attached below, 2 photos of A. Riley and 2 paintings of St. Bartholomew.