Feast of St. James
July 29, 2007

Icon of St. James, Apostle Joan Brand-Landkamer, Cathedral Iconographer

     Not long ago, I heard a celebrity being interviewed on the radio.  He went on at length to tell how, in search of just the right name for his soon-to-be-born son, he and his wife had carefully combed through a book with 10,000 names before they came up with what they agreed was just the perfect name for their son.  Michael!  I could probably have saved them some time on that one, but maybe the search was important because getting the name right is important.

     Take our name: James – St. James Cathedral.  We are one of only three St. James Cathedrals in the entire country.  The others are in Brooklyn and Orlando, but we’re the oldest of the three – 157 years old this year, in fact.  Not this building, but our name.

     Many of you know that the first St. James Cathedral stood close to Fort Vancouver on the banks of the Columbia.  Our first bishop, Bishop Blanchet, named it St. James -- some say to honor James Douglas, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company who befriended the Catholic settlers; others say Bishop Blanchet was honoring the patron saint of the Cathedral in Montreal where he once served as a priest.

     But Montreal’s St. James Cathedral, a grand, classical edifice, was a far cry from Bishop Blanchet’s St. James Cathedral – it was a converted barn on which Mother Joseph and her enterprising band of Sisters of Providence worked their magic to turn into a place of worship – a cathedral, no less.  That first St. James Cathedral was added onto some years later when they pushed out the walls of an adjoining shed which till then had served as the bishop’s residence.  Later still, in the 1880’s, Bishop Blanchet’s successor, Bishop Junger, brought his native Europe to Vancouver by building a brand new St. James Cathedral – a handsome red brick church in the neo-gothic style that still stands in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

     In the late 1890’s when Bishop Junger’s successor, the young Bishop Edward O’Dea took over the reins of the diocese, he set his sights to the north – to the bustling young city of Seattle which had suddenly become a boomtown thanks to the Alaskan gold rush.  Bishop O’Dea bought this fine piece of property high above the city on First Hill, convinced that it was the perfect perch for a great new cathedral which he intended to call Sacred Heart Cathedral.  Then all he had to do was to convince the powers-that-be in Rome that Seattle was a better place for a cathedral than Vancouver, and Sacred Heart a better name than St. James.  He won on the first count and lost on the second.  He could build a new cathedral in Seattle, all right, but, to honor the tradition, he should call it St. James.  And so he did.  And here it is!  A little grander now than when Bishop O’Dea dedicated it in 1907, but still St. James Cathedral.

     Buildings are important, but names and people are even more important.  In the Catholic tradition, a name links a person or a church with a saint – with the hope and the prayer that a special bond will grow between the two and that something of what made the saint great will live on in the namesake, be it a person or a community.

     With a patron like St. James, that gives us a lot to live up to.  James, along with his brother John and also Peter, formed something of an inner circle within the group of twelve.  These three are mentioned in the Gospels more than any of the other apostles because they were the ones Jesus took with him whenever something especially important was about to happen.  For instance, James, Peter and John were the only ones who got to go inside the house of Jairus, the Synagogue ruler, and watch Jesus raise his little daughter from her deathlike sleep.  They were the only ones, too, who stood at the bedside of Peter’s mother-in-law when Jesus healed her so instantaneously and completely that she was able to get up from her sick bed and fix dinner for them.

     And there is more.  James and Peter and John were singled out by Jesus to witness his glory in that dazzling moment of transfiguration on the top of Mount Tabor.  And, later, in the black darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane it was the three of them whom Jesus desperately wanted to have close to him, but who couldn’t keep from sleeping through his agonizing hours of struggle, so heavy were their eyes and, I’m sure, their hearts.

     And then there is today’s gospel story, one of my favorites in all the gospels because it rings so true.  The mother of James and John will forever be not just the perfect Jewish mother, but the universal mother who did what any good mother would do: she tried to get special treatment for her boys.  Who can blame her for wanting the best for her sons, the apostles?

     Of course, in making her request she didn’t exactly endear James and John to the rest of the group.  Who did she think she was?  Who did they think they were?  But, as always, Jesus used the moment to teach: to tell his friends that places of honor in his kingdom were probably not what they thought.  “Anyone among you who aspires to greatness,” he said, “must serve the rest.  And whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all.  For the son of man came, not to be served, but to serve….”
 
     My friends in Christ, those words of Jesus apply to us, too.  Our road to glory is paved not with honor and privilege but with selfless service.  And if that sounds more grim or forbidding than anything you feel like signing up for on a summer Sunday, let me encourage you with the wisdom that comes our way from today’s reading from Second Corinthians.  In a surprising series of paradoxes that mirror the foolish wisdom of the Gospel, St. Paul attempts to make sense of this upside-down faith of ours where the high places are the low places and authority is humble service.  Listen again.  “We possess a treasure in earthen vessels to make it clear that its surpassing power comes from God and not from us.  We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; full of doubts, we never despair.  We are persecuted but never abandoned; we are struck down but never destroyed.  Continually we carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed.”

     The Church wants us to hear those words on the feast of our patron St. James because they capture perfectly what James had to discover throughout a lifetime of following Jesus.  It wasn’t what his mother thought it would be, and I’m sure it wasn’t what he thought it would be.  It is no different for you and me.  Like James, we have been given a great deal: a call to follow, a friendship with the Master, some moments of special intimacy with him and, yes, a lifetime of perplexing struggles where the question marks often come more frequently than do the exclamation points.  No matter.  We are in good company – the company of James, the first apostle to give his life for Jesus. Names are important, and so are patron saints, and we’ve been given a great one!

Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor

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