Five Things to Learn from Saints Simon and Jude, October 28, 2017

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, Apostles
October 28, 2017
Eph 2:19-22, Ps 19, Lk 6:12-16

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• St. Paul in today’s first reading tells the Ephesians and us that our Christian existence is “built upon the foundation of the Apostles.” Today’s feast of the apostles SS. Simon and Jude gives us a chance to ponder several aspects of our Christian life and how to strengthen them by grounding them more firmly on the foundation of what the Lord has done and continues to do through these two apostles.
• The first thing we can examine is the theme of our calling. The apostles’ vocation, we see, was born from Christ’s prayer. Jesus had pulled an all-nighter praying to his Father praying about whom he should choose and praying for those he would choose. His prayer was not just an invocation, but a persevering one. That prayer would continue. During the ordination rite of the Last Supper we would see how fervently Jesus would pray to the Father. “I pray for them,” he said aloud, “I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me because they are yours. … Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. … I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. … Consecrate them in the truth. …  I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” And then he prayed for the apostles’ work to be fruitful, for all “those who will believe in me through their word,” and prayed for their salvation, “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, … that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jesus’ ongoing prayer would take on a very specific form, as we would see in Jesus’ Holy Thursday dialogue with St. Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your [singular] own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” It’s important regularly for us to take the time to recall with gratitude and wonder that our vocation, likewise, has its beginning in Jesus’ prayer. Just as much as Jesus prayed all night and then called Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Jude, and Judas Iscariot,” so he has prayed and called each of us. He pronounced our name at Baptism. We proclaimed ourselves present at our Confirmation as we received the same Holy Spirit they received at Pentecost. He has prayed for each of us, to keep us in the Father’s name, to unite us to God and to each other, to consecrate us in the truth of God’s word, in the truth of Jesus’ own consecration to the Father. Jesus has prayed for us that our faith may not fail and that we will strengthen the faith of each other and those we serve. Jesus continues to pray for us still. He’s praying for us at this Mass. He’s praying for us during this Jubilee of Mercy. He’s praying for us when we have difficulties in our work. His persevering prayer for us is an example for us to persevere in prayer together with him during it as well.
• The second theme is our discipleship. When Jesus came down the mountain, St. Luke tells us, he chose the twelve from among the “disciples,” from among those who were already as the Greek word disciple means Jesus’ “students,” who were zealously following him, who were living by faith, who were hearing his words and seeking to put them into practice. Together with Jesus’ prayer, that was the crucial job qualification. Jesus didn’t raid the rabbinical schools for the greatest young Scriptural scholars of the day who could more easily preach and teach. He didn’t turn to the ascetical Pharisees whose whole life was dedicated to trying to live the Mosaic law to its perfection, to those who were already praying, tithing, fasting far more than was explicitly required. He turned to common, ordinary folk. He raided wharves and tax offices, he found people under fig trees and those who were lousy private investigators tailing him to find out where he lived. For the most part, that’s always been Jesus’ way. St. Paul would say to the Corinthians, “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The saints were celebrate today are, in many ways, the least of the apostles. St. Luke put them at the very end of the list, named just before the notorious traitor Judas Iscariot. In some ways, they’re still the least. The tomb of any apostle — not to mention two apostles — would ordinarily be expected to be noteworthy, but the two of their remains, brought to Rome by Crusaders lest their tombs be destroyed by Muslims, rests quietly in the southern transept of St. Peter’s Basilica, at the altar of St. Joseph, underneath the Blessed Sacrament. Whereas St. Peter has a 70-ton bronze baldachino sculpted by Bernini and a massive dome-shamed tiara designed by Michelangelo over his remains, SS. Simon’s and Jude’s tomb remains such that most visitors to St. Peter’s have no idea where it is. But there’s a beauty here, all the same, because as disciples called by Jesus, it was never truly about them, but about him. Jesus called them because of their faith, because they knew how much they needed him and needed to learn from him. The criterion of discipleship even overcame human differences. Simon is labeled a “zealot,” from the Hebrew verb qana, which means that he was from among those most opposed to the Romans and the one whose first reaction, for example, to the calling of the tax collector Matthew, should have been fisticuffs. But as Pope Benedict said back in 2006, in Jesus’ calling the first apostles, “It was people who interested him, not social classes and labels.” He added, “This is clearly a lesson for us who are often inclined to accentuate differences and even contrasts, forgetting that in Jesus Christ we are given the strength to get the better of our continual conflicts.” It’s key for us routinely to examine the state of our discipleship, to sit at Jesus the Master’s feet as zealous students and let him form us like he formed the Twelve. Many of the issues that plague religious life begin when religious forget that they’re called, like every one of the baptized, to holiness, to be a faithful follower, to keep all the commandments out of love for God and others, to hang on Jesus’ words, to become true Good Samaritans, to practice what the Lord has sent us to preach. Many of the issues also begin when we fail to relate to each other as fellow disciples, strengthening each other’s faith by the fire of our own, rejoicing at the other’s spiritual gifts given for the building up of the Church, and helping each other stay on the narrow way when we notice that a brother or sister is beginning to drift or is lost. Just like Jesus called the 12 not to be 12 independent students but to form a college, so he’s called each of us, at this time, in this place, to form community of one heart and mind, to be with him and with each other, conscious of the fact that we need each other just as much as our bodies need eyes, hands and feet.
• The third thing we learn from today’s feast is about the apostolate. After choosing the 12, Jesus named them “apostles,” literally “those sent.” They were to become his ambassadors, his envoys, in spreading his kingdom, in heralding the Good News. In the Psalm today, we prayed, “Their message goes out through all the earth,” and we know that through 11 of these 12 men, Christ’s message did radiate throughout the ancient world. They couldn’t keep the message in. They were impelled to share Jesus, and his words, and the joy of the Christian life with others. They would walk for months to far off territories. Imagine what the Lord could do with all of us in this chapel in the much smaller territory of New York! Imagine what the apostles could have done with the resources we have at our disposal, not just our education, but our cars, our planes, our phones, our media. The very nature of your consecrated life involves a mission. Pope Benedict taught us that consecration comes from the words con (“with”) and sacer (“cut off”), which mean that in the consecrated life we’re cut off from the profane to be with the Lord. But then precisely because we’re with the Lord, we’re sent out by him and with him to continue his task of the world’s salvation. Today’s feast is a chance for us to be renewed in the apostolic zeal with which SS. Simon and Jude crisscrossed the world.
• The fourth thing to ponder today is the fact that they were martyrs. They were effective in proclaiming the faith because they were willing to die for it, they were willing to proclaim it even when it made others uncomfortable to the point of homicidal rage. They were willing to follow Jesus along the path of the grain of wheat. They were willing to lose their lives so as to save it. They were prepared to pick up their Cross each day and be crucified upon it. They recognized, as Jesus himself taught them, that they were, in the final analysis, not cursed but blessed to be persecuted, reviled and hated because of him. Their feast allows us to examine anew for what or Whom are we willing to die? Are we prepared to die to ourselves, to the old Adam in us, so that Christ may live? Are we prepared to pay the supreme sacrifice for him who paid the supreme sacrifice for us? The apostles effectively preached the Gospel because it was obvious that the words they were proclaiming, they believed, were worth living for and worth dying for. Our apostolic effectiveness is likewise dependent on this type of martyrion, this witness, this body language, which is meant to be the most eloquent message we’ll ever preach.
• And the last thing today’s feast of the two apostles teaches us is about the power of intercession. St. Jude is most famous among Catholics not because of the letter ascribed to him, not because of any particular apostolic feats. It’s because of his prayer as the patron of hopeless causes. This devotion began because pilgrims to his original tomb in Syria, before it was translated to Rome, received answers to their least likely prayers. St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Bridget of Sweden both had experiences in prayer that led them to promote devotion to St. Jude as the patron of the impossible. We’ll never know why in God’s wisdom St. Jude, and not St. Simon or St. Mary of Bethany or someone else has been the conduit through whose intercession God has worked so many wonders in response to prayer, but the larger point is that God wants all of us to be intercessors. He wants us to pray for people, especially for those entrusted to us and those who entrust to us their prayers. St. John Paul II said that the Christian life is meant to be distinguished above all by the “art of prayer” (Novo Millennio Ineunte). He instructed us to pray without ceasing, banging on the door of God like the importune widow before the judge or the neighbor seeking bread. This is one of the most beautiful, and most important aspects, of our life as Christians, and something that truly gives meaning to our faithful recitation of the liturgy of the hours.
• Today as we prepare together to celebrate Mass, we bring all of the prayers entrusted to us, and we pray also with perseverance for each other, that on this great feast day the Lord will renew each of us in gratitude for his prayerfully calling us, that we will grow in holiness as his disciples, in zeal as his apostles, in courage as martyrs whether white or red, and in constant prayer for the needs of those entrusted to us and of the Church. SS. Simon and Jude were present during the Last Supper when Jesus took bread and wine into his hands and totally changed it into himself. They were present when Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me.” And that’s precisely what they did, celebrating the Mass in imitation of the reverence with which Jesus celebrated that first Eucharist. We’re called with them to enter into Jesus’ own consecration, so that, having become fully united with him, his message may go out through us through all the earth and one day we and those we serve may come to experience eternal friendship in that kingdom in which SS. Simon and Jude and all the saints now rejoice.

The readings for today’s Mass were: