[00:00] Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, probably some of you, if not many of you, are familiar with Wikipedia. If you've ever looked in Wikipedia and looked up somebody with a name that is fairly common or shared by more than one person, there's usually then a little thing they call disambiguation. So I think I'll start out with the disambiguation of

[00:32] St. James, because there's James the Great, or the Greater, and James the Less. And most, well I shouldn't project, but for me, I'm particularly fond of the letter of St. James. So I like to think of the author of that letter being the James that was martyred, the son of thunder, the brother of John, the two sons of Zebedee, of whom we heard spoken today in the

[01:07] Gospel. He is a son of thunder, he is a son of Zebedee, he's the brother of John, but he is not author of the epistle of St. James. That's St. James the Less. The St. James that we celebrate today, though we don't have many of his words, we don't have the wisdom of St. James recorded for us in the New Testament, we do have his example, and he was actually the first apostle

[01:45] to die a martyr who shed his blood for Christ. He's not the first martyr of the Church, that was St. Stephen the deacon, but he is the first among the apostles to lay down his life. So this is the disambiguation. We're speaking of James, the brother of John, who was beheaded in Jerusalem around the year 44 AD, so not long after Christ was crucified, and he was put to death by King

[02:18] Herod, and his is the only death of an apostle that's explicitly recorded in the New Testament in the Acts of the Apostles. And he's also the James of Santiago or St. James of Compostela, the famous pilgrimage, which is actually during the Middle Ages, one of the three great sites

[02:48] of pilgrimage that Christians went to. There was Jerusalem, of course, and Rome, and then Compostela. And that tradition goes back from, first of all, the tradition of his having been a missionary in Spain, but also then after his death, centuries later, Christians carried his body back to that spot, and thus was born that famous pilgrimage on which many people still participate.

[03:22] St. James, this son of thunder then, whose mother asked for him to have a honored spot at the right or the left of Our Lord, he is an example of that audacity which, you know, on a human level, Our Lord corrects here. He says, "Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant.

[03:57] Whoever wishes to be first will be last, and become a slave, and lay down his life as a ransom for many." Our Lord said clearly no disciple is greater than his master, and St. James has the honor of being the first to follow Our Lord then in that regard. This kind of human, I guess, frailty or fault that we see in St. James, this audaciousness which is really

[04:35] perhaps born of not just a pure desire to be like Jesus, but rather to have some of that glory, vain glory maybe, is for us also a lesson. As St. Paul says, we have this treasure, the treasure of supernatural life, the life of God within us that comes from our

[05:11] baptism, from our being inserted into the mystical body of Christ, the gift of faith. We can humanly, and we must humanly, give our assent to the truth, but the faith is born of God. It's a gift, and it's a treasure, and we carry it around in earthen vessels. We see that in St. James. But it is a treasure, and the Lord allows Himself to be represented by men and women

[05:49] who are faulty. With our human weakness and faults, we can often see how we're in a certain sense inadequate to be witnesses to the all-loving God. We have tempers, we have faulty understanding, we have lack of goodwill sometimes, and yet we carry within us the seeds of eternal life,

[06:22] and we are called to share them. And St. James in his humanity is an example and a reminder to us that despite the fact that we are perhaps poor vessels for carrying the divine wisdom, the divine life that is in us as our participation in the divinity of Christ, nonetheless, God has

[06:56] chosen us, and in all humility, we have to strive then to be faithful. St. James had the benefit besides being a close associate of Christ, he was one of the three really that's frequently mentioned in special asides where Jesus takes him, for instance, at the Transfiguration up the mountain. He was one of the three with Peter and John. James also had the grace to be

[07:28] the brother of John to whom Our Lady's care was entrusted by Christ on the cross, and so no doubt his human relationship with John put him in close vicinity frequently also with Mary, and so he had the benefit of a particularly close relationship with her, and no doubt she strengthened him as she did with all the apostles in such a way that he was prepared then to be the first to lay down

[08:05] his life, and he did that faithfully. He did then drink of that cup as Our Lord prophesied he would. So, even though we don't have his words, and the words of the other James are inspiring and I would say energizing to read, we have the example of St. James who laid down his life and who was a leader among the early Church. We ask for his intercession to strengthen us

[08:38] in this time where what is needed in the Church is faithful witness, not necessarily, you know, son of thunder type of fire and brimstone, but the witness of those who believe and love the Lord and are willing to lay down their lives even. The red martyrdom that St. James

[09:12] did suffer, that cup that he drank, isn't for all of us, but the Church is suffering for a lack of victim souls, those who are willing to suffer quietly and in a hidden way for the good of the Church. We're in a time of great tribulation. We see what Our Lady predicted at Akita coming to pass before our eyes, the division bishop against bishop, cardinal against

[09:50] cardinal, and the solution is what Our Lady at Betania in Venezuela said not long after Akita that we have to be people of reconciliation. We have to be also victims. St. James certainly was that in a bloody way, and though we may not drink that cup, we do have to drink the cup of white

[10:21] martyrdom and be willing to save the faith, save the Church through our faithful witness and our suffering. May St. James encourage us and help us to carry this treasure in earthen vessels, but to carry it in its entirety, in integrity, with the help of Our Lady to strengthen us as she did him. Praised be Jesus and Mary. Amen.

[11:19] you