Day 2: Apostle of Christ

On the second day of the Saint Jude Novena, we contemplate Saint Jude as Apostle, one of the Twelve called by the Lord Jesus to be the foundation of His Church. The Apostle is more than a friend of the Lord; he is a sent man, an authoritative witness whose intercession carries the weight of his apostolic office. We come to him today not as a private patron only but as a member of the Twelve who proclaim Christ to the ends of the earth.

Today's meditation

The Lord Jesus chose the Twelve after a night of prayer (Luke 6:12-16). The list preserved by Saint Luke names "Judas the son of James", who is Saint Jude Thaddeus by the harmonization of the Gospels. He stood with the other Apostles at the Last Supper. He fled with the others at Gethsemane. He was among the Apostles in the upper room when the risen Christ appeared to them and said "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). At Pentecost, he received the Holy Spirit with the others (Acts 2). He went out to preach the Gospel to Mesopotamia, Persia, and Armenia, and there he was martyred for the name of Christ.

The Apostles bear, in the Catholic tradition, a particular kind of intercessory power. They have been sent. The word apostle in Greek means one who is sent. Their intercession is the intercession of those whom the Lord Jesus Himself sent into the world, and through whom the Church received its mission. When we pray to Saint Jude, we pray to one to whom the Lord said: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (John 20:21).

Today's intention

Bring to Saint Jude today the same intention you brought yesterday. Notice if anything in your heart has changed since Day 1. Then pray:

Most holy Apostle, Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally, as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded to you, to bring visible and speedy help where help was almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolations and succor of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly (name your request), and that I may praise God with you and all the elect forever. I promise you, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you. Amen.

Reflection

The apostolic mission is an ongoing reality. The Twelve are not figures in a closed past; their mission continues through their successors the bishops, through the apostolic Tradition, and through the unbroken life of the Church. To pray to an Apostle is to pray to a man whose mission is still being accomplished, whose witness is still being borne in the lives of the saints and in the sacramental life of the Catholic faithful.

Saint Jude's missionary travels are recorded only fragmentarily in the apostolic tradition, but the consistent witness is that he carried the Gospel to lands that knew nothing of Christ. The work was not easy. He died a martyr, killed (according to the most ancient tradition) with a club, the symbol that traditional iconography places in his hand. Today, when we name our impossible cause to him, we are naming it to a man who knew impossible causes himself: the impossibility of making the Persian peoples Christian, the impossibility of preaching the crucified Jew to gentile pagans, the impossibility of his own life ending other than in violent death.

The Apostle who succeeded in the impossible cause of evangelizing Persia under conditions of mortal danger is the Apostle who, in the heavenly intercession, can succeed in the impossible cause we have placed in his hands. "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).

Closing prayers

Pray three times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Jude, glorious Apostle, faithful witness of the Resurrection, intercede for us.