Happy Feast of St. James

 

The feast of St. James is celebrated on July 25th!  Saint James loved being a fisherman but when Jesus asked him to leave his boat and become a "Fisher of Men" Saint James said "Yes!".  He followed Jesus and taught other people about God's love.  St James was also apparently the first of the apostles to be martyred. “About that time King Herod laid hands upon some members of the church to harm them. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword, and when he saw that this was pleasing to the Jews he proceeded to arrest Peter also” (Acts 12:1-3a).  St. James is definitely a wonderful Saint to have interceding for us!

St James is an important Saint in our home because it is on his feast day that we celebrate the name of our middle son Connor James.  We love to celebrate our children's individual birthdays, baptism anniversaries and Saint name days!  We like to get them a small gift and talk to them about how they can always pray to the Saints.  On the feast of their Saint Name Day we give them a small gift so this year our son Connor got a Tiny Saint of St. James and the book The Clown of God by Tomie dePoala.  I love this book, especially for our middle son Connor because he is very similar to the main character in the story and it shows that different people have different relationships with God in special ways and offering to God what gifts YOU uniquely have.

 

This week we had a fun way to celebrate St. James's feast day because we are currently in Minnesota visiting family at the lake!  We are having such a blast at the lake swimming and watching the fishermen just like St. James.  Also, this week as we were preparing to leave on our vacation we spoke about how St. James feast day was coming up and we played with our new toy fishing set and also played Go Fish!  With little ones sometimes it works best just to let them feel like they are experiencing a little bit of the life of a saint and have something to remember them by!