I recently heard a
celebrity being interviewed on the radio. He told how, in search of just
the right name for his soon-to-be-born son, he and his wife 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 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 – nearly 170 years old, in fact. Not this
building, but our name which was given to the original cathedral down in
Vancouver, Washington, most likely because Bishop Blanchet, the first
bishop, a French Canadian, had once served at St. James Cathedral in
Montreal.
But his St. James was a
far cry from the grand one in Montreal! It was a converted barn on which
Mother Joseph and her resourceful band of Sisters of Providence worked
their magic and turned into a place of worship. Later, in the 1880’s,
his successor, Bishop Junger, brought Europe to Vancouver by building a
new St. James Cathedral – a handsome red brick church in the neo-gothic
style that still stands in 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 the Alaskan gold rush had suddenly turned
into a boomtown. Bishop O’Dea bought a fine piece of property high on
the city’s First Hill, convinced that it was the perfect perch for the
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 but lost
on the second. He was told he could build a new cathedral in
Seattle, but, to honor the tradition, he had to 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 our Catholic tradition,
a name links a person or a church with a saint and the hope is that a
special bond will grow between the two: that a little of the saint’s
greatness will live on in the namesake, be that 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. The 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 see Jesus
raise the daughter of Jairus from the dead, and to see Jesus
transfigured on the mountaintop, and Jesus in his agony and sweat in
Gethsemane. Those were privileged moments, for sure.
Of course, today’s
gospel story puts James in less than a wonderful light. Even though
we’re told that it was his mother who asked for a special place for her
two darling sons in the kingdom, it’s hard not to think that James and
maybe John were not quietly cheering her on…!
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 uses the moment to teach: to tell his friends that places
of honor in his kingdom were not what they thought. His kingdom was not
about power but about service. “The son of man,” he told them, “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 less
with honor and privilege than with selfless service. And if that sounds
more forbidding than anything you feel like signing up for on a summer
Sunday, let me encourage you with some wisdom 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.
We carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies
the life of Jesus may also be revealed.”
My friends, 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 it wasn’t what he thought it would be. It’s 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 question marks
outnumber 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
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