Posted by The WORD in other words (2014) by Fr Emmanuel Menguito SVD – Divine Word Seminary, Tagaytay City
Feast of Saint James, the Apostle – July 25
Just for us to be clear on some facts about the saint of today. There were two apostles named James, thus to distinguish one from the other, the saint of today is called James the Major or the Greater and the other James is called the Minor or the Lesser.
James, the Greater was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of John, the Apostle. He is his brother John are called in the Gospels as Boanerges or “Son of Thunder” which would have referred to their fiery temper and at the same time to the enthusiasm that they had in preaching the word of God. Saint James was the first among the apostles to die as a martyr having been beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I probably in the year 44 AD.
It looks like today’s Gospel passage put James and his brother John in a rather negative light. They seem to be power-hungry brothers who want to sit beside the Lord in his Kingdom, one on the right and the other on the left. Worse, they were seemingly hiding under the skirt of their mother, so to speak, in asking for such privilege.
But I would rather see this episode in a positive light. What I can see is the development of a weak, kind of arrogant, and yes a rather power-hungry individual into a humble committed and a true apostle of the Lord. James’ eventual martyrdom becomes the ultimate indicator of what I mean here. In the end, the power that moved this holy man was the unshakable belief that he was Jesus’ instrument to continue what was started by his Lord when the latter was still alive.
I believe the path of discipleship for everyone should take a similar path. Everyone starts as weak, proud, full of him/herself and convinced of his/her greatness. But a true apostle allows him/herself to be overwhelmed by the Master and Lord himself and follow the road of humility, of service and a forgetting of oneself.
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