Saint James the Less, Apostle and First Bishop of Jerusalem
Few among the Twelve are surrounded by such a fragrance of sanctity, austerity, and quiet authority as Saint James the Less, called also the Just, the Brother of the Lord, and the Pillar of the Church. His feast in the traditional Roman calendar is kept on the first of May, joined with that of Saint Philip, and his memory has been venerated from the very dawn of Christianity.
His Person and Identity
Sacred Scripture names several Jameses, and the Tradition of the Church, following the Fathers, identifies this James as the son of Alphaeus (Matt. x. 3) and Mary of Cleophas, who stood beneath the Cross with the Blessed Virgin (John xix. 25). He is called the Less, not from any inferiority of dignity, but, as Saint Jerome explains, either because he was younger in years or shorter in stature than James the son of Zebedee. He is likewise called the brother of the Lord (Gal. i. 19) according to the Hebrew idiom, by which near kinsmen were styled brethren — a point upon which Saint Jerome, against Helvidius, defended with vigor the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God.
His Sanctity of Life
Hegesippus, an early Christian writer of the second century preserved by Eusebius, has left us a striking portrait of his manner of life. From his mother’s womb he was consecrated to God; he drank no wine, ate no flesh, allowed no razor to touch his head, and never anointed himself with oil. He alone, of all the faithful, was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies, so great was the reverence in which he was held even by the Jews. He prayed so continually upon his knees in the Temple, interceding for the people, that his knees grew hard and calloused like a camel’s. For this reason he was surnamed the Just and Oblias, that is, Bulwark of the People.
Pillar of the Church of Jerusalem
After the Ascension of Our Lord, James was appointed by the Apostles as the first Bishop of Jerusalem, a charge which Saint Peter, Saint James the Greater, and Saint John confirmed (Gal. ii. 9). It was to him that Saint Peter sent word after his miraculous deliverance from prison: “Tell these things to James, and to the brethren” (Acts xii. 17). At the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv), he spoke with weighty authority, proposing the decree by which the Gentile converts were freed from the burdens of the Mosaic Law — a moment of enormous consequence for the universal Church. Saint Paul too, upon his return to Jerusalem, presented himself to James and the elders (Acts xxi. 18).
To him is attributed the Epistle bearing his name, in which the doctrine of justification is preserved against any antinomian distortion: “Faith without works is dead” (James ii. 26) — words which the Council of Trent would later wield against the errors of the Reformers.
His Glorious Martyrdom
About the year 62, during the interval between the death of the procurator Festus and the arrival of Albinus, the high priest Ananus, exploiting the absence of Roman authority, demanded that James publicly deny Christ before the assembled multitudes gathered for the Pasch. Set upon the pinnacle of the Temple, he was commanded to dissuade the people from believing in Jesus. Instead, he proclaimed boldly: “Why do you ask me concerning Jesus the Son of Man? He sits in heaven at the right hand of the great Power, and shall come upon the clouds of heaven.” The people cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”, while the scribes and Pharisees, enraged, cast him down from the height. Surviving the fall, he rose to his knees and prayed, in imitation of his Master, “I beseech Thee, O Lord God and Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” He was then stoned, and finally a fuller, with the club used in his trade, dashed out his brains. Hegesippus adds that the wiser Jews esteemed his death so grievous that they reckoned the destruction of Jerusalem, eight years later, as a divine chastisement for this iniquity.
Lessons for Imitation
The Church places before us in Saint James a model of several virtues which lie near the heart of the traditional spiritual life. His austerity teaches us that the body must be subdued by penance and fasting, and that the priestly soul especially must be set apart by mortification. His perseverance in prayer — those calloused knees — rebukes the tepidity of our own devotion and beckons us to long hours before the tabernacle and in the recitation of the Divine Office and the Holy Rosary. His constancy in faith, even unto a martyr’s crown, reminds us that the Christian life finds its consummation in the willing offering of all things for Christ.
Saint Augustine remarks that the saints conquer not by resisting evil with evil, but by enduring with the meekness of the Lamb; and so it was with James, who in his last breath blessed his persecutors.
A Practical Application
To honor him, one might fittingly:
Read the Epistle of Saint James slowly and prayerfully, perhaps a chapter each day for five days, pausing on the verses concerning the bridling of the tongue (iii) and the anointing of the sick (v. 14–15), the latter being a scriptural foundation of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.
Adopt some small bodily mortification — a fast, an abstinence, the renunciation of some lawful comfort — in imitation of his Nazirite-like rigor.
Pray, after his example, for the conversion of those who have rejected the Gospel, especially that the veil might be lifted from the Jewish people, for whom he labored and died.
A short prayer, drawn from the Collect of his feast in the traditional Missal: Deus, qui nos ánnua Apostolórum tuórum Philíppi et Jacóbi solemnitáte laetíficas: praesta, quaesumus; ut, quorum gaudémus méritis, instruámur exémplis. — O God, who dost gladden us by the yearly festival of Thine Apostles Philip and James: grant, we beseech Thee, that as we rejoice in their merits, we may be instructed by their example. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
If you wish to walk further in the company of the Apostles and the holy ones of God, the Lives of the Saints learning path will lead you through their biographies, their virtues, and the lessons of their imitation. Should the Epistle of Saint James itself draw you, the Theology and Doctrine path treats of the relation between faith and works, a question James settled with apostolic authority.
Sancte Jacobe Minor, ora pro nobis.