Today, we celebrate the feast day of our parish’s patron saint, St Jude, which is always celebrated in our liturgical calendar in conjunction with St Simon. St Jude is only mentioned in the lists of the apostles. He is named Jude in the Gospel of Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, he is called Thaddeus. Spanish Catholics refer to him by these two names, San Judas Tadeo, St Jude Thaddeus. Most biblical scholars do not see St Jude as the author of the Letter of Jude in the New Testament.
Simon is mentioned as one of the apostles in all four Gospels. He is referred to as a member of the Zealots in two of the Gospels. Who were the Zealots? The Zealots were a Jewish sect, like the scribes and Pharisees. The Zealots were Jewish nationalists, who saw the promise of the Messiah in terms of nationalism, as leading their nation back to greatness. The Zealots saw God alone as their king. They saw the Roman government in Israel as blasphemy against God and against their Jewish faith.
There are different traditions passed down about the different apostles, about how they died and where they were sent as missionaries. Tradition holds that Jude and Simon preached as a missionary team, traveling to Armenia to bring the Gospel there. Tradition holds that they were both martyred in Lebanon and that their remains are buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. St Jude is known as the patron saint of lost or impossible causes because it is believed that few early Christians invoked his name in prayer because his name was so similar to that of Judas Iscariot, Christ’s betrayer, that those prayers would be mistakenly received by St Judas Iscariot. Belief holds that St Jude would be eager to help anyone who prayed to him for help, to the point of interceding in the most dire and impossible of circumstances.
We conclude our novena to St Just today. We unite our prayers with his prayers. We ask him to help us with the seemingly impossible causes that exist in our lives.
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