You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hi, welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary McGahn, and I am joined with Dr. Ben Acres.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Mary.

This episode, we're going to talk about the life of St. James the Greater.

So, very excited to dive into this incredible saint. And we like to learn about the love of saints to look for inspiration

for our own lives here today. So St. James, one of the greatest apostles in the inner circle of

Jesus. What do we know about him from scripture as the biographical sketch? So what do we,

yeah, where is he from? What do we know about him at a basic level?

So we know a lot about James. He is, as you mentioned, one of Jesus's inner circle. So Peter,

James, and John, the inner circle. And they're the inner circle because they get invited by Jesus to

witness certain things that the other apostles, the other nine, don't get to see. So the, he sees the raising of Peter's mother-in-law.

He is going to see the transfiguration of Christ. He sees the raising of Jiris' daughter.

And he's also going to be present at the agony in the garden where Jesus is, you know,

not my will, but that will be done. So those are, you know, some examples in

scripture of some of the things he gets to witness. We're introduced to James,

through his brother, John, and through Peter and Andrew. They were all fishermen up in

the Sea of Galilee, so the northern part of Israel. And Jesus enters into the life of James and

John. James is fishing. John is fishing.

They're mending their nets from the beginning of Mark or also Matthew chapter 4. Jesus says,

come and follow me. And they drop their nets. They're working with their father Zebedee. So we know

...