Fr Matthew Reese

“So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”
—Ephesians 2:17-22)

Dear Friends in Christ,

This beautiful passage from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is the first lesson at today’s noonday mass, where we celebrate one of the major feasts of the Church year, that of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles.

This is an interesting feast in many ways, because we know virtually nothing about either man. Mostly, they only appear in the four lists of the apostles (in the three synoptic Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles), occupying two of the last slots.

Simon is sometimes called “the Zealot.” The identity of Jude is much more obscure… He is called Judas of James, Judas “not Iscariot,” Thaddaeus, Lebbaeus, and a few other things, beside.

There is a brief interaction between Jesus and Jude in John 14:22. Pious tradition relates that Simon and Jude struck out to preach the Gospel in Persia and were there martyred.

But beyond that, most of the Simons and Judases who appear in the Gospel accounts are other, unrelated men.

So how are we to commemorate these two of the Twelve, so dear to Our Lord, so essential to the apostolic age, about whom nothing is now known?

The answer, I think, is by working for the cause of Christ with humility. How many of the saints of God have gone on to their reward and are now long forgotten? How many great acts of faith, how many good and pious people are now lost to history? Most.

And yet, we “are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”

We do our Christian service for one another and for God, not to be remembered. How liberating is this?

—Fr Matthew