LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

Acts 12:1-2

St. James, Son of Zebedee

James and his younger brother John were mending their nets in their father Zebedee's boat on the Sea of Galilee when Christ called them, and they left the boat and their father and followed Him at once. With Peter, the two brothers formed an inner circle among the Twelve, the three taken up the mountain to see Christ transfigured in light, present when He raised the daughter of Jairus, and nearest to Him in His agony in the garden of Gethsemane.

Christ gave James and John a name of their own, Boanerges, sons of thunder, and the Gospels suggest why. They were the brothers who, when a Samaritan village would not receive Jesus, asked whether they should call down fire from heaven, and who once asked to sit at His right and left hand in glory, drawing from Him the warning that the cup He was to drink they would drink also. It was no idle warning. James was the first of the Twelve to drink it.

He was the first apostle to be martyred, beheaded in Jerusalem by order of Herod Agrippa around the year 44, as the Book of Acts records. His death marks the moment the persecution of the Church turned organized and lethal, and the moment the warning about the cup was fulfilled. The zeal that once wished to call down fire was, in the end, poured out in his own blood, and made him not a destroyer but a witness.

In the icon he is shown as a vigorous, dark-bearded man holding a scroll, his hand raised in blessing. He is remembered as the apostle who was ready, who asked for the cup before he understood it, and who, when it was given to him, did not refuse it.