Sermon by Fr. Richard Cipolla for the Feast of St. James given this evening at the Church of St. Pius X in Fairfield, CT.
One of the most dramatic scenes in the gospels is the calling by Jesus of James and
John. They are in their fishing boat with their father, Zebedee. And Jesus calls to
them: Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. So they drop their
nets, get out of the boat, leave their father behind and follow Jesus as the first two
of his disciples, who will become his apostles at Pentecost. I have always been
impressed by the clarity of this scene and the cutting away of any small talk: Come
follow me. And they left their nets and followed him.
It is James and John who are chosen with Peter to walk up the mountain to witness
what we call Jesus’ transfiguration. It is James and John with Peter who
accompany Jesus after the Last Supper when he goes to pray in the Garden of
Gethsemane. But it is also James and John who pull Jesus aside one day to ask
him if he would see to it that one of them sat on his right and the other on his left
when they reached heaven. They, like Peter, did not really understand what
following Jesus meant. James found out after Pentecost, when he became a true
apostle who proclaimed the person of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior both in
Jersusalem and in Spain. Tradition tells us that he was martyred in Jerusalem and
that his body was then carried to Compostela in Spain where he was buried.
The pilgrimage to St James’ tomb in Compostela became, as we all know, one of
the most important pilgrimage sites in the Middle Ages and beyond. People
walked from all over what we now call Europe, some for hundreds of miles, to this
shrine, as pilgrims and penitents. There has been in the recent past a revival of
Catholics making this pilgrimage, as a sign of their faith in Christ and his apostle
James, who finally understood that the heart of faith in Christ is being willing to
partake of the suffering of the Cross, which alone leads to the joy of the
resurrection. I have been to Compostela and prayed at the tomb of St. James. I
wish I could tell you that I walked many miles over the mountains to get there.
The fact is that I officiated at a lovely wedding in the north part of Portugal, and
the groom graciously offered the use of his Mercedes after the wedding so I could
drive to Compostela. And so I went in style, but I did pray there, that I would
remember what Jesus told St. James about glory in heaven: no suffering, no glory.
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