The Feast of Saints. Philip and James, Wednesday, May 3, 2023

1 Corinthians 15, 1-8

I am reminding you, brothers and sisters, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you indeed received and in which you also stand. Through it you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles. Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me.

That St. Philip was the fifth called of the Apostles is shown by St. John in his Gospel (cf. John 1, 43) after Andrew, Peter and James and John (the sons of Zebedee), and confirmed by his being named fifth in the lists of the Apostles provided by the other three Evangelists.  He hailed from Bethsaida, a town somewhat to the north and east of Capernaum near the coast of the Sea of Galilee that was also “the city of Andrew and Peter” (John 1, 44).  Like Peter, Andrew, and John, he first followed John the Baptist, and it was as his follower that he met Christ, who said to him, very simply, “Follow me” (John 1, 43).  Philip did just that for the rest of his life.  We know very little of his missionary work after Pentecost.  He may have confined himself to preaching the Gospel in his native Galilee.  The early Church historian Eusebius confuses him with the deacon Philip of whom St. Luke writes in The Acts of the Apostles.

St. Paul calls St. James, the son of Alphaeus, the brother of the Lord in Galatians 1, 18.  This may be due to a certain degree of kinship including half-brother and cousin, for the Greek word, as well as the Hebrew word underlying it, conveys a broad range of meaning.  Even if we did not know of the Blessed Mother’s virginity we would still not think it likely that he was the full brother of the Lord Jesus, for some distance lies between Bethsaida and Bethlehem, and, anyway, we know that the father of James was Alphaeus, not Joseph.  It is true that in Matthew 13, 55 the townspeople of Nazareth lost a James among the Lord’s “brothers”, but this cannot be James of Bethsaida, the son of Alphaeus.  It is more likely that the Apostle James was a cousin of the Lord.  Apart from listing him among the Apostles, though, the Evangelists tell us little about him in their Gospels.  He does, however, play a large role in the first part of The Acts of the Apostles.  He is clearly a leader of the Church in Jerusalem and is consulted on the crucial question of whether the Gentiles needed to be circumcised before baptism.  Although a very Jewish Christian, as evidenced by his Epistle, he taught that they did not.  His Letter is addressed to the Jewish Christian churches outside of Jerusalem, where the Gentiles were a minority.  He seems to have written it after the year 50 at a time when persecution and the lateness of the Lord’s coming had discouraged them.  James calls on them to persevere through the trials they were enduring and to flourish in the traditional Jewish virtues which were now glorified through the grace of Jesus Christ.  James particularly encourages these Christians to aid the poor, and he strongly admonishes them to take care in speaking.  He is our apostolic source for the Sacraments of Confession and of the Anointing of the Sick.  He governed the Church in Jerusalem for many years but was stoned by the Jews in the few years before the rebellion against Rome in 66.  

Our Faith has a historical pedigree.  It did not arise from myths and legends but we inherited it from certain people who lived wt certain times and in certain places.  Two of these people were named Philip and James.  They really knew Jesus and loved him with all their hearts.  They passed on his teachings and told of his deeds so that their descendants in faith might believe as they did.  If we hold fast to the word that has been preached to us, we will join them in the everlasting halls of heaven.