The Liturgical Calendar: The Church Remembers

Today the church remembers Saint Simon and Saint Jude, Apostles.

Christian tradition has long associated these two apostles with one another. They may have traveled and worked together. Historically speaking, we know very little about Jude and less about Simon. Jude, in modern times, has enjoyed a marvelous reputation as a patron of lost or desperate causes. He was, presumably, the author of the New Testament Epistle that bears his name. In that case he was a man with some skill in verbal expression. His happy phrase, "contend for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints," is one which has certainly endured and been much quoted. The last two verses of that Epistle are an unforgettable doxology.

Simon is called a "Zealot" in Holy Scripture, but it is difficult to determine just what that meant. There were many Zealot groups in Jewish history, most of them obscure, and they were not all alike by any means. A strong and old Eastern tradition holds that Simon and Jude were apostles to Persia. If this is true it explains, to some extent, our lack of historical information on them and also why they are usually put together.

Read the Wikipedia article here.

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