Feast day: July 25
St. James the Greater
Fisherman, son of Zebedee, member of Jesus' inner circle, and the first apostle to be martyred — beheaded by Herod Agrippa.
James was a fisherman, the son of Zebedee and the elder brother of John the Evangelist, called by Jesus together with his brother as they mended their nets — and so eager and fiery in temperament that Jesus nicknamed the two of them 'Boanerges,' the Sons of Thunder. He is called 'the Greater' to distinguish him from the other apostle James, probably because he was the elder or the first called of the two.
With Peter and his brother John, James belonged to the innermost circle of the apostles, chosen to be present at moments hidden from the rest: the raising of Jairus's daughter, the Transfiguration on the mountain, and the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. With John he once asked, to Jesus' gentle rebuke, for the first places in the kingdom — and was told he would indeed drink the cup his Master drank.
That prophecy was fulfilled. James was the first of the apostles to be martyred, beheaded in Jerusalem around the year 44 by order of King Herod Agrippa, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles — the only apostle whose death is described in the New Testament itself.
A strong later tradition holds that he had preached in Spain, and that his body was carried there and is venerated at Santiago de Compostela. Through the Middle Ages the pilgrimage to his shrine — the 'Camino de Santiago' — became one of the three greatest in Christendom, marked by the scallop shell that is still the sign of St. James and of every pilgrim who walks his road.
The Camino de Santiago to his shrine in Spain still draws nearly half a million walkers a year, 12 centuries after the route began.
Image: Peter Paul Rubens (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08279b.htm
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