Love for God

The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Pablo Garay SVD – Saint Therese Parish of Dagupan City

Feast of Saint James, the Apostle – July 25

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Today we celebrate the feast of St. James. We admire St. James for his great zeal in following and working for our Lord, a zealousness that led to his martyrdom.

James was the very first one to be martyred among the apostles in the year 43 or 44 AD during the reign of King Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12,2). A popular story about St. James is that the very person who denounced him to King Agrippa was converted to the Faith and himself was beheaded with the apostle.

The Gospel of today portrays the brothers James and John, along with their mother, as ambitious. Jesus reprimanded them for their misplaced ambition. But despite the reprimand from Jesus, we see that behind the ambition of the two brothers was the unshakable faith and loyalty of the two. Despite the pronouncements of Jesus about his suffering and death (Mt 20. 17-19), they were willing to share the cup of suffering.

We look up to St. James for his great zeal in following and workingfor the Lord. If we are to believe that today’s saint wrote the “The Epistle of James,” we meet in James a follower of Jesus who took to heart the example and commandment of Jesus: Love of God should overflow to love of our neighbor. “Looking after orphans and widows in their distress . . . make for pure worship” (James 1:27). He admonishes us to care for the sick (5:14-15). Was it not James who said that “the faith that does nothing in practice . . . is thoroughly lifeless” (2:17) or “dead” (26)?