Saint James Church, Medjugorje, Bosnia

Saint James and Medjugorje

Saint James isn’t a saint I’ve thought much about–until Thursday’s daily 6am Mass, that is. July 25 is Saint James the Greater’s Feast Day. During that liturgy, I got a nudge–more a push– to dump the reflection I’d written for today and write this new one.

Okay…

James was the first martyr. Sometime after Jesus’ crucifixion, he crossed the Mediterranean to evangelize in Spain and Portugal, then called Hispania. Just eleven years after Christ’s crucifixion he returned to Jerusalem during Herod Agrippa’s persecution of Christians. He was beheaded in 44 AD. Saint James’s is the only recorded martyrdom (Acts 12.).

Members of the inner circle with Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration and Jesus’ resurrection of religious official Jarius’ daughter. The brothers earned animosity from the other ten apostles when they asked to be seated at his right and left.

The mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons
and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.
He said to her,
“What do you wish?”
She answered him,
“Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your Kingdom.”
Jesus said in reply,
“You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
He replied,
“My chalice you will indeed drink,
but to sit at my right and at my left, this is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard this,
they became indignant at the two brothers…Gospel of Matthew.

Jesus nicknamed James and John “Sons of Thunder.”

Why?

These were the two men who heard a man calling out demons in the name of Christ. And rebuked him for doing so because he wasn’t one of them. Later in that ninth chapter of Luke, Jesus was heading for Jerusalem. On the way, they stopped at a Samaritan village that refused to receive Jesus. The brothers are enraged.

“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”

Although that’s an admittedly startling Gospel passage, it’s consoling. By then, they’d been following Jesus for three years; three years in the presence of the Creator of the Universe. And still, they could lose it. A fact I find perversely reassuring.

To understand that intensely passionate fervor, we need to consider their first meeting with Jesus. James and John were partnered with Peter. They’d been out all night and caught nothing. In fact, when Jesus tells Peter to ‘put out your boat into deep water and lower your nets for a catch,’ Peter replies that they’ have worked hard all night and caught nothing.’

But he does it anyway.

Peter’s catch requires all hands to deal with the miraculous multitude of fish when Peter had obeyed Jesus’ instuction to “put out into the deep.”

What is Jesus really saying to James and John’s request for the honor of sitting at his right and left?

Can you drink the cup which I must drink and be baptized with the baptism which I must undergo? He is saying: “You talk of sharing honours and rewards with me, but I must talk of struggle and toil. Now is not the time for rewards or the time for my glory to be revealed. Earthly life is the time for bloodshed, war and danger…
Then the other ten became angry at the two brothers. See how imperfect they all are: the two who tried to get ahead of the other ten, and the ten who were jealous of the two! But, as I said before, show them to me at a later date in their lives, and you will see that all these impulses and feelings have disappeared. Read how John, the very man who here asks for the first place, will always yield to Peter when it comes to preaching and performing miracles in the Acts of the Apostles. James, for his part, was not to live very much longer; for from the beginning he was inspired by great fervour and, setting aside all purely human goals, rose to such splendid heights that he straightway suffered martyrdom..”

Saint John Crysostom homily on Matthew

Saint James church in Medjugorje

The church’s history is providential. Its Patron Saint, James the Greater, may well have instructed the now unknown pastor to erect a church that would hold 5000 people . It was 1969 and Medjugorje a tiny place in a county that no one had ever heard of. At most, the church had a handful of parishioners. The townspeople, understandably, thought their Pastor crazy.

Twenty-one years ago, in 2003, Saint James church was so crowded that it was standing room only, I knelt on the floor for Sunday Mass, the pews were full. The fifteen of us who stayed in Mirjana Soldo’s home were placed beside and in front of Mirjana during her apparition, in the midst of what I considered a huge crowd. Now, gazing at the hundreds of thousands pictured below, the Patron Saint of Pilgrims and the Holy Spirit’s effects are awe-inspiring.

Saint James the Greater, Patron Saint of Pilgrims, indeed.

Do miracles really happen in this sacred place?