The Veneration and Feast of St. James the Brother of the Lord

The Orthodox Church keeps the memory of St. James, the Brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem, with a principal feast on 23 October and with a second commemoration on the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ, where he stands among the Holy Ancestors beside David the King and Joseph the Betrothed. In her hymnography he is titled Adelphotheos, “Brother of God,” and is honored at once as Apostle, hierarch, and martyr; on his feast the Church serves the ancient Divine Liturgy that bears his name. This file gathers what the liturgical books and calendars attest about his cult, pinning the hymnographic content to its liturgical sources.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Principal Feast: 23 October

The fixed feast of St. James the Brother of the Lord falls on 23 October in the Orthodox calendar, where he is commemorated as “the Holy Apostle James, the Brother of God (Adelphotheos), and First Bishop of Jerusalem” (Menaion, October 23; Great Synaxaristes, October 23). The day is universal in the Orthodox world: it appears under 23 October in the Greek and Slavonic Menaia alike, in the Synaxarion read at Matins, and in the calendars of the autocephalous churches that locate the service in the Menaion of the month (cf. the Orthodox Church in America and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese calendars, both pointing to the 23 October service; the date is not disputed across the tradition). The feast gathers into one liturgical celebration the three great moments of James’s life that the rest of this collection treats: his belief in the risen Christ, his thirty-year episcopate over the mother church of Jerusalem, and his martyrdom by being cast from the pinnacle of the Temple (on which see The Martyrdom and Hegesippus and Josephus).

The Synaxarion for the day rehearses the received tradition: that James was a son of the righteous Joseph by an earlier marriage, before Joseph was betrothed to the Virgin, and so is called the Lord’s brother; that he was a lifelong Nazirite of austere holiness; that he was set over the church of Jerusalem and presided at the Apostolic Council (Acts 15); and that he was killed by being thrown from the Temple and then clubbed (Great Synaxaristes, October 23; cf. Hegesippus in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.23). These hagiographical particulars are pinned to their liturgical and patristic attestation rather than asserted as bare historical fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5): the 23 October service and Eusebius’s preservation of Hegesippus are the sources from which the Church’s portrait of the saint is drawn.

The Title Adelphotheos

The most characteristic feature of James’s veneration is the title the Greek hymnography gives him without exception: Adelphotheos (ἀδελφόθεος), “Brother of God” — that is, brother of the Lord (Menaion, October 23). The word is itself a small theological statement. It does not make James a son of the Theotokos; the Orthodox tradition reads the “brothers of the Lord” in the Epiphanian sense, as sons of the aged Joseph by his first marriage, and the hymnography is careful to call James the brother of God (the incarnate Lord) and not the son of Mary, so that the Ever-Virginity of the Theotokos is everywhere preserved (see The Brothers of the Lord; on the dogma, The Theotokos). The title at once names the kinship that gives James his standing in the Jerusalem church and guards the doctrine that kinship might otherwise seem to threaten — which is why it, rather than “James the Just,” is the name the services prefer.

Apostle, Hierarch, and Martyr

The liturgical texts honor James under a threefold aspect, and the troparion and kontakion of the feast turn on it. He is venerated first as a disciple and Apostle — one who saw the risen Lord (1 Cor 15:7) and was numbered among the witnesses; second as a hierarch, the first bishop to occupy the throne of Jerusalem, so that he is the apostolic-hierarch in whom apostle and bishop are one person (on the see, The Throne of Jerusalem and The Mother Church); and third as a martyr, who sealed his witness with his blood. The dismissal hymn (apolytikion) of the feast addresses him as “Disciple of God” and as one who “received the gospel directly,” who “as a martyr” has “boldness” before the throne, and who as “brother of God” intercedes for the salvation of souls (Menaion, October 23, apolytikion of the Apostle); the kontakion likewise praises the “Word of God” who chose James as the “first shepherd and teacher” of Jerusalem and as “a faithful steward of the spiritual mysteries” (Menaion, October 23, kontakion of the Apostle). These hymnographic themes are reported here from the service of the day, the source to which such content is pinned (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

The Sunday After the Nativity

Besides his fixed feast, James is commemorated a second time within the Nativity cycle. On the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ the Church keeps the feast of the Holy Ancestors of God, commemorating together “the Holy Righteous David the King, Joseph the Betrothed, and James the Brother of the Lord” (Festal Menaion, the Sunday after the Nativity; OCA and GOARCH calendars locating the same commemoration in the Nativity cycle). When in a given year no Sunday falls between 25 December and 1 January, the commemoration is transferred to 26 December, the day after the feast itself (Festal Menaion, rubrics for the Sunday after the Nativity). The grouping is deliberate and densely theological: David the King is the royal ancestor from whom the Messiah springs according to the flesh; Joseph the Betrothed is the guardian of the Virgin and the Child; and James, as Joseph’s son, is bound to the holy household and so to the mystery of the Incarnation just celebrated. To set James beside Joseph and David on the Sunday after the Nativity is, in effect, to read his very title Adelphotheos into the structure of the Church’s year: he belongs to the family of the incarnate Lord, and the calendar places him there at the moment the Lord’s nativity is kept.

The Liturgy of St. James on His Feast

The veneration of James is uniquely marked by a liturgical possession no other apostle’s feast carries in the same way: the Divine Liturgy of St. James, the oldest complete eucharistic rite of the Jerusalem church, traditionally ascribed to him as first bishop, is served on or near his feast of 23 October in many churches where the rite is preserved (on the rite and its attribution, see The Liturgy of St. James and The Oldest Liturgy; on the Divine Liturgy generally, The Divine Liturgy). That a whole eucharistic anaphora bears his name — and is brought out precisely to honor him — gives James’s cult a liturgical density beyond the troparion and kontakion: the Church does not merely sing of him on his day but, where the rite survives, prays the very liturgy his church of Jerusalem handed down.

Relics and the Cult

The veneration of James as first bishop and martyr of Jerusalem attached early to the holy places of that city. A throne or cathedra honored as his episcopal seat was venerated at Jerusalem and is mentioned by Eusebius, who reports that “the throne of James, who first received from the Saviour and the apostles the episcopate of the church at Jerusalem… has been preserved until now” and was held in honor by the brethren there (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 7.19). His memory is kept in the dedications of churches — most visibly the Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalem, the seat associated with his name. As with every saint, this veneration is the honor (proskynesis) given to a servant of God and a “disciple and imitator of the Lord,” distinct from the worship (latreia) due to God alone — the distinction the early Church drew at the very birth of the martyr-cult (cf. Martyrdom of Polycarp 17.3). In James the Church venerates the brother of the Lord who became the first to shepherd His mother-church and the first of her bishops to die for Him.

References

The Menaion of the Orthodox Church. Vol. 2 (October), service for 23 October: “The Holy Apostle James, the Brother of the Lord.” South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press. (The apolytikion and kontakion of the Apostle; the title Adelphotheos; James as disciple, hierarch, and martyr.)
The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church. October volume, under 23 October. Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent. (The Synaxarion notice of James: the Nazirite life, the episcopate, the Council, and the martyrdom.)
The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware. South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1998. (The Nativity cycle; the Sunday after the Nativity commemoration of David the King, Joseph the Betrothed, and James the Brother of the Lord, with the transfer to 26 December.)
Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History (HE) 2.23; 7.19. Trans. Arthur C. McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1. (Hegesippus on the martyrdom of James; the venerated cathedra of James at Jerusalem.)
Orthodox Church in America, “Apostle James, the Brother of the Lord” (23 October) and “Commemoration of the Holy Righteous David the King, Joseph the Betrothed, and James the Brother of the Lord” (Sunday after the Nativity), oca.org. (Locating sources pointing to the Menaion and the Nativity cycle; calendar dates.)
The Holy Bible, cited by book chapter:verse: Acts 15; 1 Cor 15:7.