The Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles, May 3, 2024

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.

Regarding St. Philip, it is interesting to note how he came to become an Apostle: “On the following day, he went forth into Galilee and he found Philip, and Jesus said to him: follow me” (John 1, 43).  This would be the day after Jesus had met Peter, which was the day after the Lord had called Andrew and John to be his Apostles.  The text telling of Philip’s call makes it sound as though Jesus deliberately went to Galilee in order to call Philip.  Jesus “found” him, as though looking for him.  St. John does not give us an extrinsic reason for Jesus to look for Philip.  It is as though Jesus had heard of Philip and decided that he would make a fine Apostle.  Possibly Peter and Andrew knew Philip as a fellow fisherman on the Sea of Galilee and told Jesus about him as a sometime follower of John the Baptist, as they were.  This would fit in with Andrew bringing his brother Peter to Jesus and then Philip calling on his friend Nathanael to meet him.  His missionary journeys after Pentecost took him to Syria and Greece.  He is said to have converted the wife of a city official in the city of Hierapolis and that he was crucified there.

The theme of several of the Apostles knowing each other beforehand meeting the Lord leads us to the man with whom St. Philip shares his feast day: St. James.  This is not James, the elder brother of St. John, but James, the so-called brother of the Lord.  He is called this way this in Matthew 13, 55; in the early though apocryphal so-called Proto-Gospel of James; by the very early Father, Papian (d. 136), and by several other Fathers.  St. Paul also speaks of “James, the brother of the Lord” in Galatians 1, 19.  The Hebrew/Aramaic word for brother encompasses any male relative of a person.  That the Greek word does this as well is clear from He is said in the Gospels to be the son of Alphaeus, and by comparing lists of the Lord’s female disciples St. Jerome, among others, determined that his mother was Mary of Cleopas, who stood near the Cross.  (Cleopas may have been the name of her father).  The list of the Lord’s relatives in Matthew 13, 55 states that he was related to men named Simon and Jude, whom tradition hands down to be fellow Apostles.  St. James was distinguished early on by Church writers as “the Less” or “the Lesser”, likely due to the brother of St. John being the older of the two.  The Jewish historian Josephus, who also identifies James as the brother of the Lord, reports that the Jews in Jerusalem, where James shepherded the Judean Christians, called him “James the Just”, a title certainly earned by his insistence on works of mercy in his Epistle.  The Church historian Hegissipus (ca. 150) records that he lived very much like St. John the Baptist, drinking no wine, eating no meat, not cutting his hair or bathing.  Josephus hands on that the newly installed high priest Ananus, a rigid Sadducee, had James arrested as a Christian, tried, and stoned.  Others add that he was finished off with a club.

The traditional prayer for their feast day: O God, who gives us to be gladdened on the anniversary of the Apostles Philip and James, grant, we beseech you, that we who rejoice in their merits may be instructed by their examples.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The twenty-third article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: The Fraction of the Host

Though most often missed by the congregation who are busy greet each other during the Sign of Peace, the Fraction of the Host is one of the most sacred actions in the Holy Mass.  The priest takes his large Host and breaks it in two down the middle, then breaks off a small part from one of the halves and places it in the Lord’s Most Precious Blood in the chalice while saying, “May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.”  The placing of the small piece of the Host, also known as “the Particle” in the Precious Blood is a sign of the Risen Christ: he is indeed risen, but his wounds remain, just as we see in the case of St. Thomas beholding them.  The priest breaks the Host just as the Lord broke the bread at the Last Supper (cf. Matthew 26, 26).  The breaking of the Bread is found in very ancient times in the Church, from the first century Didache, to the writings of the Fathers.  Indeed, the Mass was first known as “the breaking of the Bread” (cf. Acts 2, 42).  The ritual for the Fraction and the Mixture, before the Middle Ages, was somewhat involved but was simplified over time.  With the Missal promulgated by the sixteenth century Council of Trent (only slightly modified until the late 1960’s) the Fraction and Mixture took place while the priest said, Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum (“The peace of the Lord be with you always”), making the Sign of the Cross with the Particle over the chalice before dropping it in.  Thus, the Sign of Peace had been joined for centuries to the Fraction and Mixture.  It is an important part of the worship of God for the congregation to see this and to know what the priest is saying as he does it, though he says the words quietly.  We might say that through the actions of the priest, the Lord Jesus is preparing himself to be received by us.

Next: The praying of the Agnus Dei (The Lamb of God)