Saint of Hope in Desperate Situations
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - October 26, 2007
October 28 is the feast day of Saint Jude, commonly known and invoked as the patron saint of hopeless causes. He remains one of the most popular of saints, probably because forlorn circumstances are never in short supply. Parishes and individuals continue to pray more novenas through his intercession than through any other saint. St. Jude statues, medallions and prayer cards abound. He is a saint who unites Catholics of every nationality and background, since all equally share devotion to him. One of the clearest examples of his continued popularity and ability to bring Catholics together was shown earlier this year in Taunton, when faithful from the former parishes of Immaculate Conception and St. Jacques asked Bishop Coleman to allow their newly merged parish to be dedicated to God through his intercession.
While clearly one of the most popular saints, St. Jude paradoxically still remains very much unknown. Even Catholics who invoke him are sometimes startled to discover he is one of the apostles and the author of one of the New Testament epistles. He has perennially been the "other Judas," overshadowed by Judas Iscariot.
When we look at his apostolic commission and his letter, we see clearly how he learned to trust in God when the going was toughest and become the patron of those in similar circumstances. If there ever was a seemingly "hopeless enterprise," it was the task given to the apostles — for a small team of ordinary men to spread the Good News throughout the entire world. Their success against all human odds is a tangible reminder that all things, even the most humanly impossible, are possible with God.
But St. Jude did not always grasp that such was the way the Lord wished to be glorified and have his Gospel spread. During the Last Supper, he asked Jesus, "Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?" St. Jude was wondering why Jesus would not do something so spectacular that everyone, even those opposed to him, would be forced to acknowledge who he was.
Jesus' mysterious answer points indicates God's preferred path: "The one who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." Jesus did not want to awe people into submission, but to draw them into a communion of love through treasuring his word and putting it into practice. Only those who receive Jesus' love and reciprocate it "see" Jesus as he really is; all others are blind to his full revelation — no matter how spectacular — because they do not walk by faith and love.
St. Jude eventually grasped that lesson and powerfully demonstrated it in his New Testament letter — which, at 25 verses, is so short that Catholics can read it within a few minutes.
He says that he originally intended to write "about the salvation we share," but instead he found it necessary to pen a defense of the faith against "certain intruders" who had infiltrated Christian communities and were "perverting the grace of our God into licentiousness and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." He wanted forcefully to remind the early Christians of what Jesus told him on Holy Thursday: we cannot remain in loving communion with God unless we keep his word.
What were the intruders doing? They were indulging in "sexual immorality" and pursuing "unnatural lust," the way the ancients referred to homosexual activity. But even worse than their sins, St. Jude continues, they were justifying their sinfulness, pretending their sins were sacraments and their rejection of God an expression of love.
He says that without repentance these people will perish because of their sins, just like the Israelites who rejected God and Moses in the desert, the fallen angels who did not accept God's plans for redemption, and the men of Sodom who tried to molest Lot.
In the face of this challenge, he continues, the faithful must first keep themselves in the love of God, build themselves up in the "most holy faith," and reach out themselves to the "mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life." Then they need to reach out to others, by being merciful to those who are "wavering" or who "still fear God," and to try to "snatch them from the fire." He stressed that the way to show this merciful love was to hate the sin that was killing them, even to "hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies."
His strong words and actions are tremendously relevant and instructive to faithful Catholics in Massachusetts. Many of us today can occasionally feel that working to defend the institution of marriage, or the good news of the Church's teachings on sexuality, or the sanctity of human life — even among some who call themselves Catholic — is a "hopeless cause."
St. Jude's life shows us that it is not. Challenges like the ones we face today have existed in society and in the Church from the beginning. And, with the help of God, they have been overcome. If St. Jude and the early Christians, through preaching and persevering faith and love, could transform the Church and convert the Roman empire, than by the same faith and divine assistance we can transform our parishes and over time convert our state.
St. Jude not only intercedes for us in this cause, but gives us hope and shows us the way.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
