The name Zebedee, the father of St. James and St. John, is translated as “gift of God.”  Saint James the Greater was a witness to Jesus’ Transfiguration. Jesus had His three closest apostles — Peter, James, and John — with him on a mountaintop when his body became luminous. He was joined by Moses and Elijah, who appeared with Him in glory.  Read More According to Sacred Scripture, Saint James witnessed the cure of Peter's mother-in-law and the raising of Jarius’s daughter from the dead, among other miracles. Many stories and legends attribute to James great miracles, as well, including raising the dead―a miracle not unknown in the lives of the saints, as Jesus himself promised (John 14:12).  Among the places other than Judea that we know, St. James evangelized what would become Portugal and Spain. Discouraged by his initial lack of success, the Apostle was ready to abandon the mission when the Mother of the Lord appeared to him near what would become Zaragoza, and encouraged him to continue. The people of the peninsula would indeed convert and themselves evangelize the Western Hemisphere.  This event occurred in 40 A.D., when our Our Lady was still living, and is commemorated as the appearance of Our Lady of Pilar, referring to a jaspar pillar on the site.  Often called the first Marian apparition, it is more accurately an example of the mystical phenomenon of bilocation.  St. James the Greater, having preached Christianity in Spain, returned to Judea and began again to preach and proclaim the Gospel to the Jews. Eventually he was arrested and put to death by order of King Herod, about the year 44 A.D. His body was miraculously translated to Iria Flavia in the northwest of Spain, and later to Compostela, and ultimately placed in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Here his relics became the object of pilgrimage and veneration from all over Europe during the Middle Ages, and the objective of the pilgrims Way of St. James. Read More