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Thought for the
Week Sunday
28 October 2007 – The Feast of Saints Simon and Jude Psalm 119, 89 - 96 Ephesians 2, 19 - end (omit
this reading if only two are used)
John 15, 17 – end A
salesman had an elderly Datsun 240Z, of which he was very fond. Sadly, after nearly half a million
kilometres, the gearbox completely packed up.
It was so worn out that the teeth on the gear wheels were worn almost
completely away. A new set of gear
wheels from the Datsun main dealer was so expensive that he went on the
Internet, and found that they could be bought far more cheaply in Cats
and dogs, fish and chips, gin and tonic, some things always go in pairs, even
many of the Saints. We have Saints
Peter and Paul, Saints Philip and James, and today, Saints Simon and
Jude. Sadly, the reason that so many
of the Apostles go in pairs, is that they were martyred during persecutions
of the Church, and died in horrible ways at the same time. For all martyrs, the Church wears red, the
liturgical colour that reflects the blood of the martyrs shed for us, in
order that we might have a Christian faith to inherit from them. Probably many other Christians died at the
same time as Simon and Jude, but they were not well known. So, what
do we mean, when we say that we are keeping their day today? On top of the normal round of the Church’s
Year, with the cycle of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter,
Pentecost and Trinity, we have Saints’ Days.
As near as we can get it, we remember their example, and celebrate
their lives on the day of their death, the day when they entered heaven. How do we know that they are in
heaven? Well, for the last thousand
years or so, the Roman Catholic Church has had a well-tried system to see if
somebody should be considered a Saint.
First there is an exhaustive enquiry into the holiness of their
lifestyle, during which one investigator, called the Devil’s Advocate, tries
to prove that they were not holy.
Then, if the Devil’s Advocate fails, two miracles are needed. Each miracle must be attributed to prayers
to that particular candidate. Clearly,
if God responds to the request of that candidate, then he or she must already
be in heaven. Only then does the Roman Catholic Church conclude that it is
safe to regard that candidate as a Saint. As you
might expect, in the Church of England, things are not so clear-cut. As with most Christians of the Reformation
Churches, few Anglicans pray to anybody except God. We don’t quite understand why it should
“work” any better to ask a Saint to pray for us, than to do it
ourselves. Then, most of us would say
that nobody really knows who is in heaven and who is not. For most of us, what matters is the kind of
life that Saints lead, and the impact and influence they had on the
Church. Most of the great Christian Spiritual
writers would certainly not regard themselves as Saints, and for most of
them, their spiritual experiences are mostly dry. They experience far more the absence of
God, relieved with just occasional glimpses of Him. There was recently shock and horror, when
it was discovered in her newly published diaries, that Mother Theresa of The
only Saint that the Church of England has canonised is Simon
and Jude were both Apostles, mentioned in all the lists of the Twelve in the
Gospels, and both were present at Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. We remember them together because they were
working together, taking the Gospel to What do
we know about them? Not much for
definite. It is likely that they were
at least in their twenties during the earthly ministry of Jesus, or their
youth would almost certainly have been recorded. So at the time of their death, they were
probably in their mid-fifties, relatively old for ordinary people of that
time. They travelled a great deal, and
spread the Gospel outside Both of
them are easily confused with other Apostles.
Jude is a totally different person from Judas Iscariot, who betrayed
Jesus. Sometimes, for clarity, he is
called by his surname, Thaddeus. For
many centuries, to avoid any possibility of glorifying Judas Iscariot,
Christians ignored Saint Jude Thaddeus, and he was long the forgotten Saint,
or Jude the Obscure. We can
be reasonably sure that he did not write the Epistle that bears his name. That Epistle makes no claim to be written by
an Apostle. It seems to reflect both
the apostolic age, and the time after that, when those who knew Jesus
personally had died, and all Christians shared the faith in the same, but
less direct, way. The main aim of the
Epistle of Jude is to encourage Christians to persevere, even when times are
really hard, and perhaps its writer had been inspired by the example of Saint
Jude Thaddeus in the face of the persecution that was to cost him his life. There
are three Simons in the Gospels: Simon
whom Jesus called Peter (the rock), Simon of Some
have thought that “Kananaios” meant that Simon came from Cana in The
word Zealot poses several problems.
Some terrorists at that time were called Zealots. They believed, as did all devout Jews, that
the Romans had no business to be ruling Perhaps
Simon was just known to be very zealous for God, like the Zealot
priests. More likely, he had been at
least a fringe member of either a Terrorist group, or of the Zealot Priests. So what
is there for us in keeping the festival of these two Apostles?
You are
just as important to God, his Church and his mission on earth now, as Simon
and Jude were then. You too can know
Jesus personally, even though, unlike Simon and Jude, and the other Apostles,
you did not know him during his earthly ministry. Just as they served God, building up his
church, caring for his children and preaching his Gospel in their day, you
can do the same in our day. Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy
of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |