Today we celebrate the Feast of St. James the Apostle. Tradition has it that St. James is the kinsmen or relative of our Lord Jesus Christ, often called St. James the Great or St. James the Just. St. James was the brother of St. John, a son of Zebedee, who was a fisherman and one of the first followers of Jesus. With his brother John, he was called a Son of thunder. He, his brother, and Peter were the only Apostles to be taken up Mount Tabor to witness the Transfiguration of Our Lord. He with them alone witnessed the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that Herod Agrippa, Vassal of Rome, ended his life by the sword –a curious method of execution since Jews or non-Romans were normally killed by crucifixion. Perhaps the explanation is that he was a Hellenized Jew, and thus as a citizen of the Roman Empire. It is said that his remains rest in the Church of Santiago de Compestella, in Galicia, Spain, where in 2015 some 262, 460 pilgrims travelled to thank God for his life. Finally, what remains to us from his own experience is his Epistle, which we find towards the end of our New Testament, and scholars remind us that it is written in some of the most beautiful Greek ever penned.
From the Epistle of St. James we derive a singularly beautiful and simple exhortation to the Christian life. His Epistle is not long, is bereft of high theology, but provides, perhaps, one of the most straightforward entreaties to participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity. For St. James, the ascended Jesus Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father intends that His Incarnation should continue in the hearts of His friends to ensure their salvation. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the door through which fallen man can enter once again into communion with God who is the Father of all. For St. James, God the Father's Word was made flesh and dwelt among us in the historical life of Jesus so that He might re-consecrate human nature to God by sharing His obedience to the Father by imparting Holy Spirit.
We might say that St. James provides us with the way of life that alone can ensure our redemption and our salvation. You will remember that he says that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (St. James 1.17) For St. James the way to unbreakable union with God the Father is found in the gift of Christ's ever-condescending presence. Christ descends to us first historically and then spiritually. Both movements comprise the one movement of the Father's intention to save us. Of his own will begat he us with the Word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. As the eternally-begotten Son of God came to live and die for us, so we should evidence and manifest His victory over sin and death by participating in His Resurrection and becoming the first fruits in the new harvest of His spiritual creation. The same Word of God, begotten of the Father, should, in other words, be begotten or generated in us, that we too might be called the sons of God, or even with James and John the sons of thunder. For St. James new life means the of Jesus Christ that alone saves.
No doubt it is difficult for us to imagine the overwhelming heaviness and weight of Glory that St. James finds in the condescending Word of God. We live in an age of compartmentalization. We work to make money and support families, and we rest to enjoy the surplus of the one once we met the needs of the other. What we do depends wholly on what we have materially. We wake and sleep, we work and play, we shop and garden, and so on. And while none of these things is necessarily antithetical to faith in God and fulfilment of His will, St. James insists that all of this must be measured by and adjusted to the gift of God's Grace and the thoughts of His heart. St. James reminds us that our lives come from God and that if we would live them well, we had better be obedient to His will.
Living the good life for a Christian means doing God's will through the generation of moral goodness. Moral goodness is man's response to the gift of God's Grace. God's Grace has a claim on our lives. The emotional appreciation of His gift without willful submission results in our spiritual ruination and demise. Of course, moral goodness is God's nature and thus will always be greater and nobler than what we can imagine or obtain. Yet it is precisely in this way that faith continues to seek after it as what can only stand to always make us better. Moral goodness is moral perfection, and Christ Jesus came to the earth to impart that reality to us. It is nothing less than God's glory. Religions other than Christianity don't have much to do with it. If they do, because they find that it is God's uniquely, they find little reason to believe that it can be man's practically.
Jesus Christ reveals to us the moral perfection of God that belongs to our true lives. (Canon Stone) Christ Jesus is not only the eternally-begotten Word and Wisdom of God, but he is the Perfect Man. But He is not only this. For even great men fail, teachers can be wrong, and philosophers can miss the mark easily. Christ Jesus invites us to participate in His Manhood through His Godhead. Christ Jesus manifests and reveals, through his Manhood, the Goodness of God, and that His Manhood is nothing without it. He offers to us the life of God through the Humanity, which He has redeemed and reconciled to God.