Here’s an old prayer-card image of the Apostle Saint Jude, aka. Thaddaeus, better known to us today as the patron Saint of hopeless causes. One of Jude’s letters – a rather short one – sits in our collection in the New Testament. This letter has a common theme that it shares with other early letters, that of the spirit of anti-Christ, which ever threatens belief in Christ, and seeks to draw believers back to the world. In this case though, anti-Christ may have infiltrated the Christian community itself:
“Godless men, long since destined thus to incur condemnation, have found their way secretly into your company, and are perverting the life of grace our God has bestowed on us into a life of wantonness; they even deny Jesus Christ, our one Lord and Master… they pollute nature, they defy authority, they insult august names…. Such men sneer at the things they cannot understand; like the brute beasts they derive knowledge only from their senses, and it serves to corrupt them…Godless and sinners, with how many ungodly acts they have defied God, with how many rebellious words have they blasphemed him! Such men go about whispering and complaining, and live by the rule of their own appetites; meanwhile, their mouths are ready with fine phrases, to flatter the great when it serves their ends. But as for you, beloved, keep in mind the warnings given you long since by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how they told you, that mocking spirits must needs appear in the last age, who would make their own ungodly appetites into a rule of life.”
Epistle of S. Jude, 4, 8, 10, 15-18
It sounds a little like our present anti-Christian culture, doesn’t it? I think this has always been so. It has been at rare moments in history that the Church has had any sort of moral claim on society in general without the heavy arm of the secular law on her side. But, even then, there will always be those who mock the moral life of the Christians and our beliefs, and do so openly. The solution to living in such a situation is first to build up the spiritual life of the Christian community…
“It is for you, beloved, to make your most holy faith the foundation of your lives, and to go on praying in the power of the Holy Spirit; to maintain yourselves in the love of God, and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, with eternal life for your goal.”
Epistle of S. Jude, 20-21
…and then challenge the rival philosophies and even go so far as to avoid the company of those who refuse to be corrected.
“To some you must give a hearing, and confute them; others you must pluck out of the fire, and rescue them; others again you can only pity, while you shun them; even the outward fringe of what the flesh has defiled must be hateful to you.”
Epistle of S. Jude, 22-23
Right, then, it’s time to see if we remember all the Apostles by name. Let’s set them all out with a memory assist:
B – Bartholomew
A – Andrew
P – Philip
T – Thomas
I – Iochanna (John), Iacob (James the Greater), Iacob (James the Lesser), Iuda (Jude Thaddaeus), Iuda the traitor (Judas Ish-kariot)
S – Simon (called Peter), Simon the Zealot
M – Matthew
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 