Part of the mystery of the self-emptying (cf. Phil 2:7) of Jesus in the mystery of the incarnation, is that his life on earth was surrounded by very ordinary people and places, so ordinary, in fact that we have almost no information about them. Thus, Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, yet God chose that unknown village as the place where Jesus would grow up. To those who knew her Mary was probably just a village girl like any other. In other words none of the world's glamour or fame surrounded the life of Jesus. It is not surprising, then, that Jesus chose ordinary unknown men as his "apostles", men of whose background we know almost nothing. We know of them today simply because Jesus chose them, Otherwise they would have been forgotten, like the vast majority of human beings who have inhabited this earth since the beginning. In choosing his "apostles", Jesus gave them a gift that would determine everything: they were to be "with him" (cf. Mk 3:13), his companions until death. James was one of these companions, the first of them to drink the chalice that Jesus was to drink according to Jesus' promise (cf. Mt 20:22-23).