“And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:”
James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means sons of thunder) — the collective nickname Boanerges (sons of thunder) applied to James and John suggests an intensity or volatility of character that the Gospels occasionally confirm: they ask to call down fire on a Samaritan village (Luke 9:54) and request the seats of honor beside Jesus in the kingdom (Mark 10:35–37). The nickname is affectionate but also diagnostic — Jesus sees who they are with clarity and names it. The pair will form part of the inner three (with Peter) who are present at the transfiguration and in Gethsemane.
Church Fathers on Mark 3:17
After having forbidden the evil spirits to preach Him, He chose holy men, to cast out the unclean spirits, and to preach the Gospel.
Luke, however, says that He went up to pray, for after the shewing forth of miracles He prays, teaching us that we should give thanks, when we obtain any thing good, and refer it to Divine grace.
Or spiritually, Christ is the mount, from which living waters flow, and milk is procured for the health of infants; whence the spiritual feast of fat things is made known, and whatsoever is believed to be most highly good is established by the grace of that Mountain.
Read all 16 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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