St. Jude

St. Jude, also called Thaddeus, was one of the Twelve Apostles chosen by Jesus. The Gospel lists name him as 'Jude of James,' and the evangelists are careful to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot—one reason, it is often suggested, that devotion to him lay dormant for centuries. His single recorded words come at the Last Supper, where he asks the Lord, 'Master, why is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?'—drawing from Jesus the promise that he and the Father will come to dwell with all who love him. Tradition has long identified the apostle with the author of the short New Testament Epistle of Jude, which urges believers to contend for the faith and to build themselves up in prayer and in the love of God. Of his later life the historical record is thin. Hagiographical accounts relate that he preached the Gospel in Mesopotamia and Persia together with St. Simon the Zealot, and that the two were martyred there together; for this reason the Roman calendar celebrates them jointly on October 28. Devotion to St. Jude as the patron of desperate and seemingly hopeless causes grew quietly over the centuries—saints such as Bridget of Sweden and Bernard of Clairvaux are said to have fostered it—and flowered remarkably in the twentieth century, especially in the United States, where the National Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago spread his devotion during the Great Depression. The entertainer Danny Thomas famously credited the saint's intercession and founded St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in his honor. Relics venerated as those of Sts. Simon and Jude rest beneath the altar of St. Joseph in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Countless faithful continue to invoke St. Jude in circumstances that seem beyond remedy, finding in the once nearly forgotten apostle a powerful intercessor and a reminder that no cause is hopeless before God.