St. James

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“As he was walking along by the Lake of Galilee, he saw Simon and Simon’s brother Andrew casting a net in the lake, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Come after me and I will make you into fishers of men.’ And at once they left their nets and followed him. Going on a little further, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They too were in the boat mending their nets. At once he called to them, and leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the men that he employed, they went after him” (Matt. 4:18-22).

Our Lord was walking along by this lake. He could have been admiring the view or the wonders of creation, all the great things that His Father God had created.

But we’re told He saw Simon and Simon’s brother, and later James and John. He saw them because He was looking for them, because His mind was on souls. His mind was on His mission, on the apostolate.

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. James.

As on all feast days of apostles, it’s a good moment for us to look again at our own personal apostolate of friendship and confidence, at our mission that Our Lord has called us to perform, to continue His mission.

There was a story of two horses in a field one time, and from a distance, each horse looked like any other horse.

But if you stop your cart or are walking by, you’ll notice something quite amazing. Looking into the eyes of one horse, you’ll see that he’s blind. His owner has chosen not to put him down but has made a good home for him.

And if you stand there for a while, you’ll hear the sound of a bell. And if you look around for the source of the sound, you’ll see that it comes from a smaller horse in the field. Attached to the horse’s halter is a small bell, and it lets the blind friend know where the other horse is so he can follow.

If you stand and watch these two friends, you’ll see that the horse with the bell is always checking on the blind horse and that the blind horse will listen for the bell and then slowly walk to where the other horse is, trusting that he will not be led astray.

When the horse with the bell returns to the shelter of the barn each evening, it stops occasionally and looks back, making sure that the blind friend isn’t too far behind to hear the bell.

Like the owners of these two horses, God doesn’t throw us away just because we’re not perfect or because we have challenges or problems. He watches over us and even brings others into our lives to help us when we’re in need.

Sometimes we’re the blind horse being guided by the little ringing bell of those whom God places in our lives, and other times we are the guide horse, helping others to find the way.

Good friends are like that. You may not always see them, but you know they’re always there. We can look around us and see, For whom has God called me to be a spiritual guide? Who are the souls that He wants me to follow a little more closely?

“Come after me and I will make you into fishers of men.” We don’t make ourselves into fishers of men. But as we go close to Christ, we begin to share the desires of His heart. And His heart is always focused on souls.

James was one of the three disciples to witness the Transfiguration. He was also present at the Agony in the Garden and other important events in Our Lord’s public life.

He and his brother John were full of impetuous zeal, and so they earned for themselves the name “Sons of Thunder”–Boanerges (Mark 3:17).

James developed his apostolate in Judea and Samaria, and it’s also thought that he preached the Gospel in Spain.

On his return to Palestine about the year 44, he became the first apostle to suffer martyrdom at the order of Herod Agrippa. His remains were later brought to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which became a popular medieval pilgrimage site, and a sanctuary of the faith for all of Europe.

In recent years, that has been revived to a certain extent. It has become very fashionable to do the Camino. Many young people today have sort of notched that up on their belt—they’ve done the Camino.

All that started long ago when Our Lord was walking by the Sea of Galilee looking for special souls, souls who would respond to His call and follow Him.

“They lived with Him for nearly three years. They shared his daily life. They were witnesses to his prayer, and his mercy towards sinners and those who suffer. They also saw his power. They listened attentively to his words, the like of which they never heard before.

“In those three years that they spent with Our Lord; they experienced a reality that was to possess them forever: life with Jesus” (Carlo Caffarra, Living in Christ).

We are also called to be apostles, to grow in our apostolic zeal and vibration, to fashion our hearts after the heart of Christ.

That apostolic discovery in their life “broke the threads of their prior existence.” They left everything—their family, their trade, their possessions, their way of thinking. “They were introduced to a new way of living” (ibid).

We are very much called in the current world to be apostles of the “New Evangelization” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris Missio, December 7, 1990), to be introduced to a new way of living, put our faith into practice in concrete ways.

The Holy Father has talked to us in his letter this year about St. Joseph (Pope Francis, Patris Corde, December 8, 2020), about having courageous initiative—the sort of initiative that Joseph had, “launching out into the deep” (Luke 5:4), solving problems, facing difficulties.

When Our Lord said, “Come follow me, and I will make you into fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19), James couldn’t have had any idea what that was going to entail.

But we see that James was the object of a special choosing by Our Lord. He specifically chose these people.

These were the ones He wanted to use to bring the great Gospel message to the ends of the earth. And we are the continuation of that in time.

Our Lord let James see the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:37). He let him be present in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:37). He saw things that the other apostles didn’t see.

There was one particular event that the Gospel of today’s Mass narrates from St. Matthew:

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem”—Our Lord told them—“and the Son of Man will be given over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will rise on the third day” (Matt. 20:18-19).

On this occasion, Our Lord felt the need to bear the innermost sentiments of His soul. “The mother of the sons of Zebedee, James and John, drew near to him with her sons and bowed down at his feet to make a request” (Matt. 20:20).

She asked Him to reserve two eminent places for her sons in His seemingly imminent kingdom. It’s a big request. It’s a tall order. It’s a request made with faith and daring. She wants the best for her children.

Our Lord turns to these two sons and says, “Can you drink of the cup of which I’m about to drink?”—the cup, the chalice, which in Scripture usually means suffering.

He offers them His cup. At the time, the offer to ask someone or permit someone to drink from your own chalice was considered a great sign of friendship.

And they immediately respond, “We can!” (Matt. 20:23). St. Josemaría loved those words. Full of optimism, of daring. “We can.” We can do anything.

It’s full of the enthusiasm of youth. But there’s also a great amount of faith and daring behind it.

He wanted that in all of our apostolic endeavors, we would be fired with the same optimism and enthusiasm.

We can, not because we’re able or we’re strong or we’re healthy or we’re this or we’re that. But we can because we have the grace of God. “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

“These words express a generous docility.” John Paul II says these words “reflect an attitude that belongs to all the young at heart and to all Christians, especially those who are willing to be apostles of the Good News” (John Paul II, Address, November 9, 1982).

When we try to live our Christian vocation well—to fall in love with Our Lord Jesus Christ—we become more effective apostles all the time. The Holy Spirit uses us as better instruments—the things we do, the things we say, our lifestyle, our example of virtue.

All this helps us to be young at heart, even though we might be advanced in years. We never lose the ideals that we had in our youth: love of life, love of family, love of country. These are characteristics of the heart of a young person.

Jesus accepts their generous response and says immediately, “Yes, you will drink from my cup” (Matt. 20:23). You will participate in my sufferings. You will complete my Passion in your own bodies.

James is going to be martyred. John will die a natural death, but only after being boiled in oil and coming out alive. John must have had a pretty thick skin.

In the year 44, James died by decapitation. John was tried with innumerable sufferings and persecutions throughout his life.

Ever since Our Lord redeemed us on the Cross, all Christian suffering consists in “drinking from the cup of the Lord” through participation in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

Whatever sufferings Our Lord may send us in the course of our life—physical, moral, and emotional—we can always unite them to the Cross of Christ and see the apostolic value of offering those things to Our Lord in unity with Him. “We can. Possumus.”

Possibly, in this moment, Lord, I don’t see the fruit or the rationale behind these contradictions that you’ve sent me, but I know the hand of God, the loving hand of my Father, is somehow working through all these things.

This is a message that God wants us to communicate to many people around us: By means of our suffering, we complete in a certain way His Passion that is thus prolonged in time with its saving fruits. St. Paul says, “I rejoice now in the sufferings I bear for your sake, and for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, I fill up in my body for the sake of the Church” (Col. 1:24).

There is nothing lacking in the sufferings of Christ, “but what is lacking is our participation in those sufferings” (cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, February 11, 1984).

We could ask Our Lord today that we might always have on our lips those words of James and John—“We can”—and have them in our hearts.

In the face of difficulties, sickness, or pain, Jesus puts the same question to us: “‘Can you drink from my cup?’ If we are united to Him, we will respond positively and bear what is humanly disagreeable for His sake.

In union with Christ, even our pain and failure are converted into joy and peace.

We’re told in Furrow, “The great Christian revolution has been to convert pain into fruitful suffering, to turn a bad thing into something good. We have deprived the devil of this weapon; and with it we can conquer eternity” (Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow, Point 887).

We’re involved in this great Christian revolution. An elderly priest once told me that he had counted up the number of times the word “revolution” appears in a book called The Way by St. Josemaría and he mentioned some huge number of times, maybe 150 or 200 or something.

We’re involved in a revolution. We’re bringing about a Christian revolution of love in society. An apostolic revolution.

Like St. Joseph, we’re called to have a courageous initiative in fulfilling the mission that God has given to us. We don’t have to get discouraged by our personal weaknesses. We seek our strength in Christ.

From the time that James gave himself completely to the time of his martyrdom, there’s a long interior development. God wants to change our souls over time, to grow us into being authentic apostles.

The same zeal of James, earlier directed against the Samaritans who didn’t want to receive Jesus—
“people who didn’t want to receive him because his face was set towards Jerusalem” (Luke 9:53), was later to be transformed into a zealous concern for souls.

Little by little, without losing the vigor of his personality, James learned that zeal for divine interests cannot be violent or bitter. The glory of God is the only worthwhile ambition.

When we look at the lives of the apostles, we’re led to think of high ideals in our apostolate. Christ is playing for the big stakes.

We’re here to change society, and Our Lord wants us to bring about the instruments that can help Him to change society.

Each one of us may be a major choice in bringing about that reality that has to sow a big furrow in the world, and along the pathway we can expect contradictions.

Clement of Alexandria talks about how St. James was taken before a tribunal to be judged. He was put through all sorts of trials. But eventually everything went forward.

We also see the defects of the apostles. They weren’t powerful. They weren’t wise. They weren’t even simple. At times we see them being ambitious, argumentative (Luke 22:24), short of faith (Matt 14:31).

But the power of God is able to work wonders in them and in us. That power of God brought James to martyrdom.

When James went to heaven, he must have been very thankful to God for leading him along pathways that were quite different from what he had dreamed about earlier in his life.

We too can thank God that He’s called us to have very supernatural goals for our existence. We come to see that the Lord is good; infinitely wise; loving, beyond what we can realize.

On many occasions, He doesn’t give us exactly what we ask for, but He gives us what is most appropriate for us, and therefore the best, and leads us to participate in the building of great realities.

I remember talking to a cooperator of Opus Dei in the Philippines many years ago, who has since passed on, and he told me that when he became a cooperator, he didn’t understand everything about Opus Dei.

‘But,’ he said, ‘I know I’m in contact with something wonderful, something that’s doing something tremendous in society and the world.’

Those were very beautiful words. ‘I had that great sense of privilege, of being involved in something so wonderful.’ It’s like “the treasure hidden in a field” (Matt. 13:44).

When God gives us the opportunities to influence, to participate, in big enterprises that are going to do a lot of good in the world, we have to try and seize the opportunity. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here.

Our Lord was patient with the shortcomings of the apostles. He draws out their greatness of heart, forms them, builds them up. He allows them time to learn all the lessons that He imparts with divine wisdom and affection.

St. John Chrysostom says, “Let’s examine how Our Lord’s way of questioning is equivalent to an exhortation and a stimulus. He does not say, ‘Can you bear defeat? Are you capable of shedding your blood?’ His words are, ‘Can you drink from the cup?’ To encourage them, He adds, ‘…from which I am about to drink?’ The prospect of drinking from the Lord’s own cup leads them to a more generous response” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Matthew’s Gospel).

Lord, help my response to be generous, to give myself.

Mother Teresa liked to say we have to “give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is not true love in me” (Mother Teresa, Address, February 3, 1994).

“Our Lord gives the name ‘baptism’ to his Passion, to emphasize that his sufferings would be the cause of great purification for the whole world” (John Chrysostom, ibid.).

“I have a baptism to be baptized with, and what would I but that it be accomplished?” (Luke 12:50).

The Lord has also called us. There can be no room for discouragement. If our defects and weaknesses become manifest, that’s par for the course.

If we approach Our Lord for help, He will give us the courage to continue on our path with greater fidelity, because He’s always patient. He allows us the time we need to improve.

St. Paul says, “We bear this treasure in vessels of clay, that it may be clearly seen that our power comes from God, and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. 4:7).

We are rather fragile creatures, and not very constant; but nevertheless, we are capable of bearing in ourselves an incomparable treasure, since God works marvels in men despite their weaknesses.

St. Paul tells us that sometimes God precisely “chooses the weak to confound the strong, and the vile and scorned of the world, as well as those who are naught, to destroy the things that are, lest any human flesh should pride itself before the Creator” (1 Cor. 1:27-29).

St. Paul, who was previously a persecutor of the Church, was the one who wrote these amazing words.

By bearing God in our soul in grace, we can live at the same time both “in heaven and on earth, divinized, but knowing that we are of the world and made of clay—an earthenware vessel which Our Lord has chosen to use in his service—with the frailty that is typical of such fragile material.

“And when the vessel is cracked or broken, we will see that the seals that are put on big jars in need of repair are put there also, so that they can continue to be useful” (Salvador Bernal, Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá: A Profile of the Founder of Opus Dei).

But all the time God is using us even with our faults.

There’s a story of two earthenware jars in China one time. One was in perfect shape, the other had a big crack. The two were used to carry water from the well.

After some time, the pot that was in perfect shape brought a full quantity of water. But the other pot had a crack in it. The water was leaking out along the pathway. It always arrived with much less water.

At one stage the pot that had this crack complained to God and said, ‘Look, I’m not much use. I’m not as good as this other pot. It’s in perfect shape; I have this crack. I can’t carry as much water.’

And God replied, ‘Yes, I’ve taken that into account. Haven’t you noticed that all along the pathway from the well, flowers have been growing? I’ve been using your watering from your crack to make all those flowers grow.’

God makes use of our defects and our shortcomings to sow seeds and make those seeds grow in ways that we could never have imagined.

God gives effectiveness to all those who have the humility to feel themselves as “vessels of clay—the ones who “wear in their own body the mortification of Jesus” (cf. 2 Cor. 4:10).and who drink from the cup of the Passion which Our Lord drank.

We can have great faith in our mission, where God has placed us in our family, in our neighborhood, in our profession, in the people that we meet, in our circle of friends. It’s the harvest that God wants us to look at.

On this feast day, we can ask St. James to help us to begin again in the personal apostolate of friendship and confidence, that we might have the zeal of the apostles.

St. James brought the faith to the very limits of the known world. We have to try and be thinking along the same lines.

It’s said that Our Lady appeared to him very often to offer him encouragement. Whenever we get a little bit discouraged, we can also turn to Our Lady.

Our Mother is always there for us. We can seek her intercession, and she will give us that courage and that joy to proceed along our way, like the Apostle St. James.

Mary, Queen of Apostles, pray for us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JOSH