St. James the Greater

Saint James the Greater, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, was one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles. His title distinguishes him from the other apostle named James; it is not a judgment that one was holier than the other.

Together with Peter and John, James witnessed events including the Transfiguration and Jesus' anguish in Gethsemane. The Gospels thus place him close to both the revelation of Christ's glory and the suffering that challenged the disciples' expectations of the Messiah.

Acts records that Herod Agrippa had James killed by the sword. The notice is brief and supplies no detailed account of his final words or trial. It makes him the first of the Twelve whose martyrdom is explicitly recorded in the New Testament.

Later traditions connect James with preaching in Spain and with the transfer of his remains to Santiago de Compostela. These accounts should be distinguished from the biblical evidence. Their influence on Christian history is nevertheless substantial: Compostela became a major destination of pilgrimage, and James's staff and pilgrim imagery continue to associate his apostolic mission with the journey of faith.

Benedict XVI's catechesis draws attention to a less comfortable part of James's discipleship: the request that he and his brother receive privileged places beside Jesus in the kingdom. Read alongside the later martyrdom notice, that episode prevents a portrait in which the apostle understood the meaning of following Christ completely from the beginning.

The catechesis interprets his journey through the contrast between glory and suffering. The disciple who desired a place of honor had to learn a form of participation that included Christ's passion. This is a theological reading of the Gospel episodes, not a reconstruction of James's unrecorded thoughts or final speeches. Its force rests on comparing what the texts actually preserve.