Universalis: Today

Friday 25 July 2008
Saint James, Apostle
Feast

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Tomorrow: Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
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Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of apostles.

St James (? - 44): He was the brother of St John and, like him, a fisherman. He was one of the witnesses of the Transfiguration and one of those who slept through most of the Agony in the Garden. He was the first of the apostles to be martyred, being beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I to please the Jewish opponents of Christianity. He was buried in Jerusalem, and nothing more is known about him until the ninth century.
At this time we learn of a tradition that the relics of St James were brought to Spain some time after his martyrdom, (perhaps early, perhaps as late as 830), and his shrine at Compostela in Galicia grew in importance until it became the greatest pilgrimage centre in western Europe. In every country there are churches of St James and known, well-trodden pilgrim routes. In Paris, the Tour St Jacques marks the start of the route and the Rue St Jacques points straight towards Compostela. In England, pilgrim routes lead from all parts of the country to the major ports that were used on the pilgrimage. This network of routes is a vital witness to the fact that the Middle Ages were not the static stay-at-home time that we often think them to be: everyone must have known someone, or known someone who knew someone, who had made the pilgrimage. The scallop-shell, the emblem of St James, has become the emblem of pilgrims generally.
In 1987 the pilgrimage routes to Compostela have been designated by the Council of Europe as historical cultural routes of international importance; and the Confraternity of St James is working to restore and upgrade the refuges on a route which is still in active pilgrim use today.
See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)	2 Corinthians 5:19 - 20 ©
God has entrusted to us the news of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God.

Noon reading (Sext)	Acts 5:12 - 14 ©
Many signs and wonders were worked among the people at the hands of the apostles and the numbers of men and women who came to believe in the Lord increased steadily.

Afternoon reading (None)	Acts 5:41 - 42 ©
The apostles left the presence of the Sanhedrin glad to have had the honour of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name. They preached every day both in the Temple and in private houses, and their proclamation of the Good News of Christ Jesus was never interrupted.

July 2008
Thu 24	Thursday of week 16 of the year or Saint Charbel Makhlouf, Priest
Fri 25	Saint James, Apostle Feast
Sat 26	Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Sun 27	17th Sunday of the year
Mon 28	Monday of week 17 of the year
Tue 29	Saint Martha
Wed 30	Wednesday of week 17 of the year or Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, Doctor
Thu 31	Saint Ignatius Loyola, priest

Calendar used: General Calendar

Scripture readings taken from the Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.

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