A reflection for Wednesday within the Twenty-Second Week after the Octave of Pentecost: Ss. Simonis et Iudæ Apostolorum, II classis (28 October)
The vestments are red today, and the Introit begins with friendship: Mihi autem nimis honorati sunt amici tui, Deus: nimis confortatus est principatus eorum, “But to me thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable: their principality is exceedingly strengthened” (Ps. 138:17). Its verse is the psalm’s opening confession: Domine, probasti me, et cognovisti me, “Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me.”
Those two lines contain the whole Mass. The Apostles are God’s friends. Our Lord will call them that in the very discourse from which today’s Gospel is taken: “I will not now call you servants… but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Friends of God are also proved. The Gospel speaks of the world’s hatred, and the red of the vestments tells us how the proving ended for these two.
Simon and Jude are among the least known of the Twelve. The Gospels give us a handful of words from one of them and none at all from the other. Yet the Church keeps their day as a feast of the second class. On the threshold of November, three days after the Kingship of Christ was proclaimed and three days before All Saints, she sets before us two Apostles about whom we know almost nothing. In doing so she shows us what apostleship actually is. It is not personal renown. It is a gift given secundum mensuram donationis Christi, according to the measure of Christ’s giving.
I. Dedit dona hominibus: the Epistle
“Brethren: To every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the giving of Christ. Wherefore he saith: Ascending on high, he led captivity captive; he gave gifts to men. Now that he ascended, what is it, but because he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:7-13)
To every one of us. Unicuique nostrum data est gratia. St. Paul has just spoken of the one Body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:4-5). Now he turns from what is common to what is distinct. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on this verse, notes the pastoral purpose of the word measure. No one should grieve that he has received a smaller gift than his brother, and no one should be proud of a greater one. The gift is not a wage for merit. It is apportioned by Christ, who knows what each member of His Body is for (Hom. in Eph. 11). The Apostle who has the least to say in the Gospels has received his measure as truly as Peter or John received theirs.
He led captivity captive. Ascendens in altum captivam duxit captivitatem. The Apostle quotes the sixty-seventh Psalm, the great processional hymn of God going up to His sanctuary. Chrysostom asks what this captivity was, and answers that it was the devil, sin, the curse and death. The tyrant who had held mankind captive is himself led captive in the train of the ascending King (Hom. in Eph. 11). The image is a Roman triumph. The conqueror goes up to the Capitol with his prisoners behind him and scatters largesse to the crowd.
He gave gifts. St. Jerome noticed what any careful reader of the Psalter will notice. The psalm says accepisti dona in hominibus, “thou hast received gifts in men,” but the Apostle writes dedit dona hominibus, “he gave gifts to men.” Jerome treats the change as an inspired interpretation rather than a slip (Comm. in Eph. II, on 4:8). St. Augustine reconciles the two readings by the doctrine of the whole Christ. As God and as Head, Christ gives. In His members, He receives. What He receives in them, He gives to them. The gift above all gifts, Augustine says, is the Holy Spirit Himself, who is poured out on the Church from the ascended Lord (De Trinitate XV.19).
He descended first. St. Thomas sets out the two traditional readings of descendit primum in inferiores partes terræ. It may mean the Incarnation, by which the Son came down from heaven to earth, the lowest region of the visible creation. Or it may mean His descent to the souls of the just in the limbo of the Fathers (Super Eph., cap. 4). Both readings say the same thing. The One who now fills all things first emptied Himself. The gifts that come down to the Church come down from a Lord who first came down Himself.
Apostles first. Et ipse dedit quosdam quidem apostolos. Chrysostom observes that the Apostles stand first in the list because they held every gift together. They were prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers at once, and they went everywhere, while the others were bound to particular places (Hom. in Eph. 11). It is for this verse that the Church gives today’s Epistle to Simon and Jude. Their whole identity in the Church is that Christ gave them. They are gifts from the ascended Lord to His Body.
Unto a perfect man. All these gifts look toward one end: donec occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei, et agnitionis Filii Dei, in virum perfectum, in mensuram ætatis plenitudinis Christi. St. Augustine, discussing the resurrection in the City of God, considers whether this measure refers to the age at which the risen will rise. He concludes that it chiefly signifies the fulness of Christ’s Body, the Church, which is completed when every member has been added to the Head (De civitate Dei XXII.15-18). The perfect man is not any single Christian. It is Christ whole, Head and members, grown to His full stature. Every apostle, every pastor, every doctor and every Mass is ordered to that growth.
II. Si mundus vos odit: the Gospel
“At that time Jesus said to his disciples: These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake: because they know not him that sent me. If I had not come, and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth me, hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. But that the word may be fulfilled which is written in their law: They hated me without cause.” (John 15:17-25)
Love one another. The Gospel begins with the commandment of love before it speaks of hatred. St. Augustine sees the order as deliberate. Our Lord first binds His disciples together in charity, and only then warns them of the world’s enmity, so that they may bear the hatred of the world because they are held fast in the love of one another (Tract. in Ioan. 87). A Church divided within cannot stand the pressure from without. The Epistle’s unitas fidei and the Gospel’s diligatis invicem are the same defence.
The world would love its own. Si de mundo fuissetis, mundus quod suum erat diligeret. Augustine draws out the two senses of “world” in this passage. There is the world that is loved by God, which Christ came to save. There is also the world that hates, the mass of men who love what passes and will not be drawn out of it. And there is a world chosen out of the world, which is the Church. The whole world, he writes, hates the whole world: the world that is condemned persecutes the world that is reconciled (Tract. in Ioan. 87). The disciples are hated not because they are worse than others but because they have been taken out from among them, elegi vos de mundo.
The servant is not greater than his master. Our Lord had already said this at the Last Supper, after washing the disciples’ feet (John 13:16). Now He applies it to suffering. Augustine notes that the saying works in both directions. If they persecuted the Master, they will persecute the servants. If they kept His word, they will keep the servants’ word too (Tract. in Ioan. 88). The Apostles will meet both. Some will drive them out and kill them. Others will hear them and believe, and from those hearers the Church of every nation will be gathered. In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum, sings today’s Offertory: “Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth” (Ps. 18:5).
They would not have sin. Si non venissem, et locutus fuissem eis, peccatum non haberent. Our Lord does not mean that those who never heard Him are sinless. Augustine explains that He means one particular sin, which holds all the others bound: the sin of not believing in Him. Had He not come, that sin would not have been possible. Since He has come, spoken, and done works that no other has done, there is no longer any excuse for it (Tract. in Ioan. 89). Revelation brings responsibility. The more clearly the light is shown, the graver it is to turn from it.
Without cause. Odio habuerunt me gratis. The Gospel closes with a line from the Psalms (Ps. 34:19; 68:5). Augustine’s comment is one of the most memorable things he wrote on St. John. The word gratis means “for nothing,” “without reason,” and it is the same word used of grace. The world hated Christ gratis, seeking no advantage from it. In return, Christ loves gratis, seeking no advantage from us. The disciple must learn to love in the same way, even those who hate him for nothing (Tract. in Ioan. 91).
III. Simon the Zealot and Jude Thaddeus
The Gospels tell us very little about these two men, and it is worth being honest about what is known and what is only handed down.
What Scripture tells us. Simon is called Cananæus in St. Matthew and St. Mark (Matt. 10:4; Mark 3:18) and Zelotes in St. Luke (Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). St. Jerome connected the first name with the town of Cana. It is now more commonly understood as a rendering of the Aramaic word for “zealot,” so that St. Luke simply translates it. Whether it marks him as a member of the party of fierce Jewish nationalists or simply as a man of zeal for the Law, he is one of the Twelve, chosen by name.
Jude is Iudas Iacobi in St. Luke (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13), Jude of James. He is Thaddeus in St. Matthew and St. Mark (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18). St. John identifies him carefully as “Judas, not the Iscariot” (John 14:22). He is traditionally held to be the author of the Epistle of St. Jude, which opens: “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (Jude 1).
St. John records the only words of Jude that we have. They were spoken at the Last Supper, in the same discourse from which today’s Gospel is taken: Domine, quid factum est, quia manifestaturus es nobis teipsum, et non mundo? “Lord, how is it, that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, and not to the world?” (John 14:22). Today’s Gospel is in part the answer to that question. Christ manifests Himself to those He has chosen out of the world, and the world, which does not receive Him, hates both Him and them.
The Epistle of Jude has one charge that goes with today’s Epistle: “to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The Apostle who asked how Christ would be manifested ended by guarding the faith in which that manifestation is kept.
What tradition holds. The lessons of the Roman Breviary for this feast follow an ancient Latin Passio of the two Apostles. In that account Simon preached in Egypt and Jude in Mesopotamia, and the two met in Persia, where they won many to Christ and together received the crown of martyrdom. This account is venerable and the Church has long prayed with it, but it belongs to traditio pia. It is not documentary history. The traditional emblems, the saw for Simon and the club or halberd for Jude, come from the same narrative.
The Eastern Churches keep different traditions and different days for the two Apostles. Eusebius tells of a Thaddeus sent to King Abgar of Edessa (Hist. eccl. I.13), whom he counts among the Seventy. Later Syriac and Latin tradition often blended this Thaddeus with Jude the Apostle. Some writers also identify Simon and Jude with the Simon and Jude named among the “brethren” of the Lord (Matt. 13:55). That identification is ancient but disputed, and should not be pressed.
What is firm is that the Roman Church honours them together and keeps their relics in St. Peter’s Basilica. In the last two centuries, the faithful have turned to St. Jude as patron of desperate causes. A common pious explanation is that he was neglected for centuries because his name resembled the traitor’s, and so he is quick to help those who have no one else. Whatever the origin, the devotion fits a man whose only recorded words ask how Christ will show Himself to the few and not to the world.
These two men were not given renown. They were given a measure of grace, a place in the foundation of the Church, and a share in their Master’s rejection. Their hidden lives are not a gap in the record. They show what the Epistle means: the gifts belong to Christ, and the glory is His.
IV. The Mass as a whole: down from the Ascension and back to the fulness
St. Thomas teaches that all things go forth from God and return to Him. Today’s Mass traces that pattern through the apostolic ministry.
The going forth. Christ descended in inferiores partes terræ and rose super omnes cælos. From that height He gave His gifts, and the first of them were the Apostles. They were sent out: In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum. Their going out was not into a welcoming world. “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you.” The sending out of the Apostles reproduces the coming of the Son. As He descended and was rejected, so they are sent out and rejected. The Gradual sings that God will make them princes over all the earth, constitues eos principes super omnem terram (Ps. 44:17). Their principality is won by martyrdom.
The return. Everything that went out is ordered to come back, gathered and grown: donec occurramus omnes… in virum perfectum. The Apostles are given ad consummationem sanctorum, for the perfecting of the saints. Their labour and their blood build up a Body that is moving toward its full stature in Christ. The Communion antiphon shows where the road ends: Vos qui secuti estis me, sedebitis super sedes, iudicantes duodecim tribus Israel, “You who have followed me shall sit on seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). The men the world judged worthy of death will sit in judgment with Christ.
The hinge between them is love. The Gospel begins ut diligatis invicem. The Epistle ends with the unity of faith. Augustine’s gratis joins them: Christ loved without cause and was hated without cause, and the Church goes out into a hostile world carrying a love it has received for nothing, in order to draw that world back into the one Body.
V. The Collect
Deus, qui nos per beatos Apostolos tuos Simonem et Iudam ad agnitionem tui nominis venire tribuisti: da nobis eorum gloriam sempiternam et proficiendo celebrare, et celebrando proficere.
“O God, who by Thy blessed Apostles Simon and Jude hast granted us to come unto the knowledge of Thy name: grant us both to celebrate their eternal glory by advancing in virtue, and to advance in virtue by celebrating it.”
The first clause echoes the Epistle. The Apostles were given for the knowledge of the Son of God, and the Collect confesses that through them we have come ad agnitionem tui nominis. We know God’s name because men like Simon and Jude were sent to speak it.
The petition is one of the finest pieces of Roman liturgical Latin: et proficiendo celebrare, et celebrando proficere. It joins two things the world easily separates, worship and growth. We celebrate the saints well only if we are growing in holiness, and we grow by celebrating them, by keeping their feast, hearing their Mass, and asking their prayers. The verb proficere answers the Epistle’s donec occurramus in virum perfectum. A feast day is not a pause in the work of becoming holy. It is part of the work.
VI. A word for practice
Examine. Do I expect the world to love me for being a Christian, and resent it when it does not? Where have I tried to be “of the world” in order to avoid its displeasure? Have I quietly resented that my gift, my vocation, or my place in the Church is smaller or less visible than someone else’s, forgetting that each is given secundum mensuram donationis Christi?
Do. Do one hidden service today that no one will notice, in honour of two Apostles whom history barely noticed. Then, as the Gospel asks, love one another: seek out a brother or sister in the faith from whom you have grown cold, and make peace before All Saints.
Pray. Pray the Collect slowly, resting on proficiendo celebrare, et celebrando proficere. Bring before St. Jude one cause you have given up on, and leave it with him.
Aspiration. Mihi autem nimis honorati sunt amici tui, Deus. “To me, O God, thy friends are exceedingly honourable.”
Devote. It is Wednesday, traditionally the day of St. Joseph, and it falls in the month of the Holy Rosary. Pray the Glorious Mysteries, lingering on the Ascension, when He ascended on high and gave gifts to men, and on the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles. Prepare for All Saints by keeping the Vigil on Saturday with its traditional fast and abstinence, according to your observance.
If you wish to go deeper: the Theology and Doctrine path takes up the theology of charisms and the hierarchical structure of the Church set out in Ephesians 4, together with Augustine’s teaching on the Christus totus, Head and members. The Lives of the Saints path continues with the Apostolic College, tracing what Scripture records and what tradition holds of each of the Twelve. The Church History path follows the apostolic missions eastward into Mesopotamia and Persia. The East-West thread compares the Roman joint feast of Simon and Jude with the separate Byzantine commemorations and the Edessene tradition of Thaddeus and Abgar. The Sacred Liturgy path studies the Common of Apostles and the Mass Mihi autem nimis.
Sources. Scripture is cited from the Douay-Rheims with the Vulgate. The Fathers and Doctors are given in paraphrase with their loci: St. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Epistolam ad Ephesios 11; St. Jerome, Commentarius in Epistolam ad Ephesios II; St. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.19, De civitate Dei XXII.15-18, and Tractatus in Evangelium Ioannis 87-89 and 91; St. Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolam ad Ephesios, cap. 4; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica I.13. The account of the Apostles’ mission and martyrdom follows the traditional lessons of the Roman Breviary and is offered as pious tradition, not documentary history.
Sancti Simon et Iuda, orate pro nobis.