St. Jude

Jude, called Thaddaeus in some Gospel lists to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot, appears in the Gospels only once by name and barely at all in the narrative. John records his single question at the Last Supper: why did the Lord not manifest himself to the world rather than only to the disciples? The answer Jesus gives — that the Father and the Son will come and make their dwelling in anyone who loves and keeps the word — is one of the most concentrated theological statements in the farewell discourse. The question is characteristically apostolic: still thinking in political and visible terms, still uncertain about the kind of kingdom being announced, and yet present, and asking.

The tradition of Jude's later apostolic mission sends him to Persia, to Mesopotamia, to the region of Syria and Armenia. The epistle that bears his name in the New Testament — brief, urgent, dense with Old Testament allusion and early apocalyptic imagery — reveals something of the writer's character and concern: a man writing against teachers who have crept into the community and are turning grace into license, using the most vivid imagery available to him. The concluding doxology is one of the finest in the New Testament. A paradox of his cult deserves note: for centuries Jude was among the least invoked of the apostles, for fear that petitions directed to him might be confused with those directed to Judas. That long neglect is part of why his modern patronage of hopeless causes has a particular poignancy — the forgotten apostle is now turned to precisely when all other intercession seems to have been exhausted.