"I Will Come to you"
YOU HAVE MADE US FOR YOURSELF, O GOD, AND OUR HEARTS ARE RESTLESS
UNTIL THEY REST IN YOU

[St Augustine, THE CONFESSIONS]

August 2, 2026, 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time 

Just before the end of July was the feast of the Apostle St James, often “St James the Greater” because he was the brother of the Apostle John and was one of the three Apostles we might call “the inner circle of the inner circle.” There is a second St James the Apostle, called “son of Alphaeus” to distinguish the two.

St James the Greater was a fisherman, a partner of St Peter, whom Jesus called along with Peter and John. Those three were given the vision of the glory of Jesus on Mount Tabor, and were singled out to accompany Jesus in his prayer in Gethsemane the night before the crucifixion. After the resurrection of Jesus, we are told that James was the leader of Christ’s followers in Jerusalem (today we would call him the “first bishop” of Jerusalem) and was the first one of the Apostles to be martyred, being killed by King Herod.

Something I had never thought about before struck me as I was praying the Divine Office on the feast of St James. He was the first Apostle to be martyred for the sake of Jesus, and according to Catholic tradition, his brother John was the last of the Twelve Apostles to die at a ripe old age when he could only come to Mass by being carried in on a stretcher. The story was handed down by Christians that the Romans tried to put John to death by putting him in boiling oil, but he survived and eventually died of old age.

It struck me that James and John are like two bookends of the earliest days of the Church. James, the first to die, and John, the one whose death marked the end of what we usually call the Apostolic Age of the Church. It also made me think that no one is ever too old to die or too young to die. We are all given a certain time of life on this earth, a time determined by the providence of God. Every day is a gift from the Lord during our earthly life, and we would do well each evening to thank God for the gift of that day, and to thank God if we rise in the morning to another day.

Msgr. Dzielak