St. Jude Thaddeus, Apostle

SAINT JUDE, APOSTLE.

The apostle St. Jude is distinguished from the Iscariot by the surname of Thaddaeus, which signifies in Syriac, praising or confession, (being of the same import with the Hebrew word Judas) also by that of Lebbaeus, which is given him in the Greek text of St Matthew; that word signifying, according to St. Jerom, a man of wit and understanding, from the Hebrew word Leb, a heart; though it might equally be derived from the Hebrew word, which signifies a Lion. St. Jude was brother to St. James the Less, as he styles himself in his epistle; likewise of St. Simeon of Jerusalem, and of one Joses, who are styled the brethren of our Lord, and were sons of Cleophas, and Mary, sister to the Blessed Virgin. This apostle's kindred and relation to our Saviour exalted him not so much in his master's eyes as his contempt of the world, the ardour of his holy zeal and love, and his sufferings for his sake. It is not known when and by what means he became a disciple of Christ; nothing having been said of him in the gospels before we find him enumerated in the catalogue of the apostles. After the last supper, when Christ promised to manifest himself to every one who should love Mm, St. Jude asked him, why he did not manifest himself to the world ? By which question, he seems to have expressed his expectation of a secular kingdom of the Messias. Christ by his answer satisfied him, that the world is unqualified for divine manifestations, being a stranger and an enemy to what must fit souls for a fellowship with heaven but that he would honour those who truly love him with his familiar converse, and would admit them to intimate communications of grace and favour.

After our Lord's ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. Jude set out with the other great conquerors of the world and hell, to pull down the prince of darkness from his usurped throne ; which this little troop undertook to effect armed only with the word of God, and his spirit. Eusebius relates, that the apostle St. Thomas sent St. Thaddaeus, one of the disciples of our Lord, to Edessa, and that king Abgar and a great number of his people received baptism at his hands. St. Jerom and Bede take this Thaddaeus to have been the apostle St. Jude : but it is the general opinion that it was another person, one of the seventy-two disciples whom the Greeks commemorate in the Menaea on the 21st of August. Nicephorus, Isidore, and the Martyrologies tell us, that St. Jude preached up and down Judaea, Samaria, Idumaea, and Syria ; especially in Mesopotamia. St. Paulinus says, that St. Jude planted the faith in Lybia. This apostle returned from his missions to Jerusalem in the year 62, after the martyrdom of his brother, St. James, and assisted at the election of St. Simeon who was likewise his brother. He wrote a catholic or general epistle to all the churches of the East, particularly addressing himself to the Jewish converts, amongst whom he had principally laboured. St. Peter had written to the same two epistles before this, and in the second, had chiefly in view to caution the faithful against the errors of the Simonians, Nicholaits, and Gnostics. The havoc which these heresies continued to make among souls stirred up the zeal of St. Jude, who sometimes copied certain expressions of St. Peter, and seems to refer to the epistles of SS. Peter and Paul as if the authors were then no more. The heretics he describes by many strong epithets and similes, and calls them wandering meteors which seem to blaze for a while, but set in eternal darkness. The source of their fall he points out by saying, they are murmurers, and walk after their own lusts; for being enslaved to pride, envy, the love of sensual pleasure, and other passions, and neglecting to crucify the desires of the flesh in their hearts, they were strangers to sincere humility, meekness, and interior peace. The apostle exhorts the faithful to treat those who were fallen with tender compassion, making a difference between downright malice and weakness, and endeavouring by holy fear to save them, by plucking them as brands out of the fire of vice and heresy, and hating the very garment that is spotted with iniquity. He puts us in mind to have always before our eyes the great obligation we lie under of incessantly building up our spiritual edifice of charity, by praying in the Holy Ghost, growing in the love of God, and imploring his mercy through Christ. From Mesopotamia St. Jude travelled into Persia, as Fortunatus and several Martyrologies tell us. Those who say, that he died in peace at Berytus, in Phenicia, confound him with Thaddaaus, one of the seventy-two disciples, and the apostle of Edessa, of whom the Menasa gives that account.( Fortunatus and the western Martyrologists tell us, that the apostle St. Jude suffered martyrdom in Persia; the Menology of the emperor Basil, and some other Greeks say at Arat or Ararat, in Armenia, which at that time was subject to the Parthian empire, and conseqently esteemed part of Persia. Many Greeks say he was shot to death with arrows: some add whilst he was tied on a cross. The Armenians at this day challenge him and St. Bartholomew for the first planters of the faith among them.

We owe to God a homage of eternal praise and thanks for the infinite mercy by which he has established a Church on earth, and a Church so richly furnished with every powerful means of sanctity and grace ; a Church in which his name is always glorified, and many souls, both by the purity of their love and virtue, and by their holy functions, are associated to the company of the blessed angels. It ought also to be our first and constant petition in our most earnest addresses to God, as we learn from our Lord's prayer, and as the first dictates of divine charity and religion teach us, that for the glory of his holy name he vouchsafe to protect and preserve his Church, according to his divine word ; to extend its pale, to sanctify its members, and to fill its pastors with the same spirit with which he so wonderfully enriched his apostles, whom he was pleased to choose for the foundation of this sacred edifice. If we desire to inherit a share of those abundant and precious graces which God pours forth upon those souls which he disposes to receive them, we must remember that he never imparts them but to those who sincerely study to die to themselves, and to extirpate all inordinate attachments and affections out of their hearts; so long as any of these reign in a soul, she is one of that world to which God cannot manifest himself, or communicate the sweet relish of his love. This is the mystery which Christ unfolded to St. Jude. The world hath not known him. Few even among those who know God by faith, attain to the experimental knowledge of God, and the relish of his love, because few, very few, disentangle their affection from creatures. So long as their hearts remain secretly wedded to the world, they fall in some degree under its curse. And how few study perfectly to extinguish its spirit in their hearts!

- The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume 10
By Alban Butler

Prayer to St. Jude
TO BE SAID IN CASES DESPAIRED OF

St. Jude, glorious Apostle, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor has caused thee to be forgotten by many, but the True Church invokes thee universally as the Patron of things despaired of;  pray for me that finally I may receive the consolations and the succor of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations and
sufferings, particularly [make your request], and that I may bless God with the Elect throughout eternity. Amen.

St. Simon the Apostle

ST. SIMON, SURNAMED THE ZEALOT, APOSTLE.

St. Simon is surnamed the Cananaean or Canaanite, and the Zealot, to distinguish him from St. Peter, and from St. Simeon, the brother of St. James the Less, and his successor in the see of Jerusalem. From the first of these surnames some have thought that St. Simon was born at Cana, in Galilee: certain modern Greeks pretend that it was at his marriage that our Lord turned the water into wine. It is not to be doubted but he was a Galilaean: Theodoret says, of the tribe either of Zabulon or Nepthali. But as for the surname of Cananaean, it has in Syro-Chaldaic the same signification which the word Zelotes bears in Greek. St. Luke translated it ; the other evangelists retained the original name; for Canath in SyroChaldaic, or modern Hebrew, signifies Zeal as St. Jerome observes.  Nicephorus Calixti, a modern Greek historian, tells us this name was given to St. Simon only from the time of his apostleship, wherein he expressed an ardent zeal and affection for his Master, was an exact observer of all the rules of his religion, and opposed with a pious warmth all those who swerved from it. As the evangelists take no notice of such a circumstance, Hammond and Grotius think that St. Simon was called the Zealot, before his coming to Christ, because he was one of that particular sect or party among the Jews called Zealots, from a singular zeal they professed for the honour of God, and the purity of religion. A party called Zealots were famous in the war of the Jews against the Romans. They were main instruments in instigating the people to shake off the yoke of subjection ; they assassinated many of the nobility and others, in the streets, filled the temple itself with bloodshed and other horrible profanations, and were the chief cause of the ruin of their country. But no proof is offered by which it is made to appear that any such party existed in our Saviour's time, though some then maintained that it was not lawful for a Jew to pay taxes to the Romans. At least if any then took the name of Zealots, they certainly neither followed the impious conduct, nor adopted the false and inhuman maxims of those mentioned by Josephus in his history of the Jewish war against the Romans.

St. Simon, after his conversion, was zealous for the honour of his Master, and exact in all the duties of the Christian religion and showed a pious indignation towards those who professed this holy faith with their mouths, but dishonoured it by the irregularity of their lives. No further mention appears of him in the gospels, than that he was adopted by Christ into the college of the apostles. With the rest he received the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost, which he afterwards exercised with great zeal and fidelity. Nicephorus Calixti, and some other modern Greeks, pretend, that after preaching in Mauritania, and other parts of Africa, he sailed into Britain, and having enlightened the minds of many with the doctrine of the gospel, was crucified by the infidels. But of this there appears no shadow of probability, and the vouchers, by many inconsistencies, destroy the credit of their own assertion. If this apostle preached in Egypt, Gyrene, and Mauritania, he returned into the East; for the Martyrologies of St. Jerome, Bede, Ado, and Usuard place his martyrdom in Persia, at a city called Suanir, possibly in the country of the Suani, a people in Colchis, or a little higher in Sarmatia, then allied with the Parthians in Persia: which may agree with a passage in the Acts of St. Andrew, that in the Cimmerian Bosphorus there was a tomb in a grot, with an inscription, importing, that Simon the Zealot was interred there. His death is said in these Martyrologies to have been procured by the idolatrous priests. Those who mention the manner of his death say he was crucified. St. Peter's church on the Vatican at Rome, and the cathedral of Toulouse are said to possess the chief portions of the relics of SS. Simon and Jude.

- The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume 10
 By Alban Butler