Prayer to St. Jude

St. Jude Thaddeus is honored throughout the Church as the patron of desperate situations and hopeless causes — the apostle to whom the faithful turn when every other help seems to have failed. A pious explanation for this patronage has long been given: because his name, Jude (Judas), was so easily confused with that of Judas Iscariot the traitor, the faithful were slow to invoke him — and so, tradition holds, he is all the more eager to hasten to the aid of those who do call upon him, especially in their most desperate need.

He was one of the Twelve Apostles, named in the Gospels among the closest companions of Our Lord. St. John records his single question at the Last Supper: "Lord, how is it, that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, and not to the world?" (John 14:22) — where the Evangelist is careful to distinguish him, "Judas, not the Iscariot." He is traditionally identified with the Apostle Thaddeus named by St. Matthew and St. Mark, and called in the New Testament the "brother of James."

The short Epistle of St. Jude, near the close of the New Testament, is traditionally ascribed to him — a stern and fervent letter urging the faithful to "contend earnestly for the faith" against those who would corrupt it. After Pentecost, according to ancient tradition, he carried the Gospel into Mesopotamia and Persia, where he is held to have been martyred, often in the company of the Apostle St. Simon, with whom he shares his feast.

Because of his martyrdom he is often shown bearing a club or an axe; a flame above his head recalls Pentecost, and the image of Christ he carries on his breast recalls an ancient legend of the Holy Face. The great modern devotion to St. Jude spread widely in the twentieth century, and his shrines remain places where the desperate and the forgotten come to lay their hardest petitions before a friend of Christ.

St. Jude speaks once in the Gospels, and it is a question at the Last Supper: “Judas saith to him, not the Iscariot: Lord, how is it, that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, and not to the world?” (John 14:22). St. John is careful to add not the Iscariot — the same care the faithful showed for centuries by leaving him alone, which is one explanation of how he became the patron of causes nobody else would take. His own epistle asks for what this prayer asks: “But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 1:20–21).