Feat of Saints Simon and Jude Apostels Luke 6,12-16

If I asked you to name the twelve apostles, you would probably stop at ten. Peter, James, John, Andrew, and Matthew—those names are easy to remember. Thomas—we remember him. But Simon and Judas?

Every list in the Gospels puts them at the very end. Almost as an afterthought. And perhaps that is why the Holy Spirit gives us their feast today, to remind us that there are no afterthoughts in the Kingdom of God.

#### 1. Who are they?

The Church has always had to explain who they are, because we know so little and confuse them so easily.

**Simon** is called the Zealot, or the Canaanite. Not because he was from Cana, but because of the Hebrew word *qanai*, meaning zealous. Before he met Jesus, his zeal was for politics, for purity, for Israel to be free from Rome. He likely dreamed of a Messiah with a sword. He was a man of fire, of conviction, and of black-and-white thinking.

**Judas** is not Judas Iscariot. The Gospels make this clear: Judas, son of James, Judas Thaddeus. For that very reason he became the patron saint of hopeless cases—because for centuries, Christians were nervous to pray to a man named Judas, lest their prayer go to the traitor. So only the truly desperate prayed to him. And they discovered he never fails to answer.

One was a zealot. The other was forgotten. Jesus chose them both.

Tradition says that after Pentecost, they went together to preach the Gospel in Persia, in what is now Iran. And there they were martyred together. Simon was sawn in half; Jude was beaten with a club. That is why in art you will see Simon holding a saw and Jude holding a club or a medallion with the face of Christ.

#### 2. What do they teach us?

**First, that Jesus can hold together what we cannot.**

Think about who else was in the Twelve. Matthew the tax collector. Matthew collaborated with Rome for money. Simon the Zealot wanted to kill collaborators like Matthew. In any other movement, they would have killed each other. In Jesus, they become brothers. They share the same table.

If Christ can make a Zealot and a tax collector live together, He can hold together our parish, our families, and our divided country. The Church is not a club of like-minded people. It is a miracle of people who have nothing in common except Christ.

What divisions do you hold in your heart that Christ is asking you to lay down at this altar?

**Second, that God loves hidden faithfulness.**

We have not one word recorded from Simon in Scripture. Not one. From Jude we have one question at the Last Supper—”Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”—and a short Epistle of Jude, 25 verses.

They did not write a large Gospel. They did not become Peter, preaching to thousands. They went to the edge of the known world, to a place no one would remember, and gave their lives there.

Most of us will live a life like Simon and Jude, not like Peter and Paul. A hidden life. No books are written about us. But God saw. The reading today from Ephesians says, “You are built upon the foundation of the apostles.” The foundation is hidden. Nobody visits a building to admire the foundation, but without it, everything collapses.

Your hidden prayers, your patience in illness, your fidelity in a difficult marriage, and your work offered each morning—that is apostolic. That holds up the Church.

**Third, that there is no hopeless case.**

St. Jude Thaddeus reminds us of this truth. In his epistle he writes, “Keep yourselves in the love of God… have mercy on those who waver, save others by snatching them out of the fire.”

Perhaps you carry someone in your heart today who seems far from God. Perhaps you carry someone in your heart today, whether a child, a friend, or even yourself. You think, “It’s hopeless.” Then you are precisely the person Jude was made for. He is the patron of hopeless causes precisely because God wanted to show that every cause is hopeful for Him.

So what shall we ask of Saints Simon and Jude today?

From Simon the Zealot, let us ask for true zeal. Not the zeal that burns others down, but the zeal that allowed him to be transformed—from zeal for his nation to zeal for the Kingdom of Christ. Lord, give us convictions, but make them Yours.

From Jude, let us ask for hope. For the courage to bring our impossible situations to Christ and leave them there.

At the end of the Gospel today, Luke says after Jesus chose the Twelve, “a great crowd of people… came to hear him and to be healed.” The apostles were chosen not for privilege but to bring people to Jesus for healing.

You and I, through baptism, share that same apostolic mission.

Saints Simon and Jude, apostles of the hidden and the hopeless, pray for us. Amen.