Anxious, bewildered, crushed, disillusioned or grief-stricken? When hopelessly lost, a prayer to Saint Jude, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus, may solve your predicament.
Although information about Saint Jude is scarce, he is a saint called upon often for intercession.
Desperate people regard him as the “Saint of Hope and the Impossible,” the patron of “lost causes.”
Malcolm Day, in A Treasury of Saints, wrote that having a name that resembles Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was advantageous to Saint Jude, who “is prepared to support even the most desperate of his petitioners’ predicaments.”
Patron saint of the impossible
Jude, a brother of Saint James, is the son of Alphaeus. Clopas, his mother, is a cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was born in Paneas, a town in Galilee, which was bebuilt during the Roman period and was renamed Caesaria Philippi.
His original name, Judas, was changed to Jude by early writers who translated the New Testament to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot. Evangelists Matthew and Mark preferred to call him Thaddeus, which means courageous in Aramaic.
The “Passion of Simon and Jude,” an apocryphal document, and the New Testament are the main sources of information about the saint.
Saint Jude is depicted with a flame around his head, which means the presence of Pentecost.
He is also shown holding an image of Jesus Christ, known as Image of Edessa. King Abagar of Edessa, who had leprosy, was healed when he pressed his face on the cloth with Jesus’ image, which the Lord gave to Jude.
Jesus inspired devotion to Saint Jude when He appeared in a vision to Saint Bridget of Sweden and said: “His surname means ‘amiable or loving, and will show himself most willingly to give help.”
The web site saintsandangels.org also said Saint Bernard “had visions from God to accept Saint Jude as the Patron Saint of the Impossible.”
Because Saint Simon the Zealot was his companion in his travels, it was deduced that Jude was also a Zealot, a Jewish militant nationalist during the first century in Israel.
Zealots desired a free and independent Jewish state, so they refused to pay taxes. They were also violent to fellow Jews who collaborated with foreign rulers in the administration of government. Others considered them as patriots, so Saint Luke called Simon the Zealot a patriot.
Martyr of the church
After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Jude traveled to Mesopotamia (then composed of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey) for 10 years preaching and converting people.
He was the author of epistle to churches of the East, particularly Jewish converts on the heresies of Simonians, Nicolailes and Gnostics, “false teachers who claim to be believers and cause divisions among the people of God.”
Jude, the founder of the Church in Urfa, was beaten to death while preaching to a pagan priest. Other Christian literatures said he was clubbed to death and his head was shattered with an ax.
According to tradition he was martyred with Simon in Syria about 65AD.
Simon and Jude were honored by the Eastern Church and Western Christianity. Their remains are both in Saint Peter’s Basilica under the main altar of Saint Joseph.
His feast day is October 28.
****
Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons