The saints

Saint Jude Thaddeus

Apostle · Feast day October 28 (with Saint Simon) · First century · Galilee · Also known as Thaddeus, Judas (not Iscariot)

Saint Jude, also called Thaddeus, was one of the twelve apostles and, by long devotion, the patron of lost causes and desperate situations. He is the writer of the short Letter of Jude, a call to contend for the faith.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,Jude 1:24 (KJV)

The apostle with a hard name

Jude appears in the lists of the twelve, named Thaddeus in some and Judas, not Iscariot, in John's Gospel, where he asks Jesus at the last supper why he will show himself to the disciples and not to the world. Because his name was so close to that of Judas the betrayer, few for centuries dared to call on him, and so he became the forgotten apostle.

Patron of lost causes

Precisely because he was so overlooked, a tender devotion grew that Jude would be all the more eager to help those in the most hopeless and desperate straits, the cases no one else would take. To this day he is the beloved patron of lost causes, and his help is sought by those at the end of their hope.

The Letter of Jude

The brief Letter of Jude, near the end of the New Testament, urges believers to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints, and closes with one of Scripture's great doxologies: Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. By tradition Jude preached in Mesopotamia and Persia and was martyred there with Simon.

Why Jude still matters

Jude is the friend of the desperate and the forgotten. His life says that no situation is beyond hope while God is able to keep us from falling, and no one is so overlooked that heaven does not know their name.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Patron saint of lost causes · Saint Simon · Saints for October 28 · Saint of the day