Feast of St. James the Apostle

“About that time, Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the Church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword….” -Acts 12:1-2

Saturday, 7/25, is the Feast of St. James the Apostle, also called St. James the Greater, not because he is more important than St. James the Lesser (also an Apostle), but likely because he was physically larger or older than the other James. James, the son of Zebedee and Salome, is the brother of John the Apostle. Together, Jesus called them “Boanerges” or “Sons of Thunder” because of their hot tempers, recounted in the story about them wanting to call down fire from Heaven onto a Samaritan village that refused Jesus. Jesus chose James, together with Peter and John, to witness three significant events: raising Jairus’s daughter, the Transfiguration and Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane.

As noted in the passage above, James was the first Apostle to be martyred. According to legend, in 40 AD, James was preaching in Hispania (modern-day Spain) when the Virgin Mary (who was still alive) appeared to him on a pillar on the bank of the Ebro River. He immediately returned to Judea to preach there. Herod Agrippa I arrested and beheaded him in 44 AD. His head is buried under the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalem. His disciples retrieved his headless body and carried it via a stone ship to Galicia, Spain, where it currently lies buried beneath the Shrine at Santiago de Compostela. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims journey along routes from all across Europe each year to visit this Shrine.

James is the patron saint of Spain, Guatemala and Nicaragua, as well as more than two dozen cities. He is also the patron saint of oyster fishers, veterinarians, pharmacists and several other professions. St. James, please pray for us!