Saints Philip and James (1st century) apostles
Philip
Philip was from Bethsaida. It is he who
brought Nathanael to Jesus (Jn 1:43). He has a Greek name and brought
some Greeks to introduce them to Jesus (Jn 12:21-22).
After Jesus's last
supper discourse, Philip says to Jesus, "Show us the Father and we will
be satisfied."
Jesus, says, "Philip, have I been with you all this time
and you still do not know me."
Perhaps with his Greek name, Philip is
being presented as a typical rationalist.
At any rate his faith would
have been confirmed after Pentecost with that of the other apostles .
James
James sometimes called James the Less,
possibly meaning "the small" (possibly from Mk 15:40) and also called
the "son of Alphaeus" (Mt 10:1-4) and "the brother of the Lord".
He
emerged as the ruler of the Church in Jerusalem after the Ascension and
played a central role in the Council of Jerusalem.
He was prominent in
backing the decision not to impose Jewish customs on Gentile converts
(Ac 15:13-21) and in commissioning Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles.
Jerusalem and the poor
James asked that wherever
Paul went, he should remember the poor, and Paul organised a collection
for the Church in Jerusalem (Rom 15:26-28, Gal 2:10, 2Cor 8:9 and Acts
24:17).
In recent years papal documents have returned to this theme in
talking about solidarity with and a preferential option for the poor
(especially in the thought of John Paul II).
The Letter of James
The poor of the Christian
communities are central also to the Letter that is entitled "of James",
but rather than being an indication of actual authorship, this is more
likely an example of what is called "pseudepigraphy", that is, the
attribution of a writing to an author to claim his spiritual authority
in order to approve its contents.