James: Name Day and Patron Saint

St James is called the Brother of the Lord because, as tradition holds, he was a son of the righteous Joseph from his first marriage, before Joseph was betrothed to the Most Holy Theotokos. From his youth he was consecrated to God as a Nazirite. When Christ began to preach the Kingdom, James believed and became His apostle, and he was chosen the first Bishop of Jerusalem. He presided at the Council of the Apostles there, and his word was decisive. He lived very simply on bread and water, slept little, and knelt in prayer so often that his knees grew hard as a camel’s; for his upright life all called him the Righteous One. For about thirty years he shepherded the Church of Jerusalem and brought many of his own people to Christ. Angered by this, some of the Pharisees and scribes set him on the pinnacle of the Temple and asked him to turn the people away from Jesus. Instead he proclaimed that Jesus is the Christ. They threw him down and stoned him, and he died praying for those who killed him, about the year 63. The Church keeps his Epistle in the New Testament, which teaches that faith without works is dead, and the Divine Liturgy that bears his name, on which the liturgies of St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom were later based. His feast is 23 October (5 November on the Old Calendar), and he is remembered again on the Sunday after the Nativity, with David and Joseph.

What the faithful pray for

• a faith that shows itself in good works
• patience and steadfastness in trials
• perseverance in prayer
• bishops and the Church of Jerusalem
• the grace to forgive those who persecute us