St. Jude Thaddeus

Who they were

Jude Thaddeus was one of the twelve apostles, named in the gospel lists and distinguished there from Judas Iscariot, usually by calling him Thaddeus or "Judas, not the Iscariot". That distinction is the whole reason for his patronage, though it took centuries to develop.

Almost nothing certain is known about his life after Pentecost. Tradition holds that he preached in Mesopotamia and Persia, and that he was martyred there, often alongside the apostle Simon, which is why the two share a feast day. The New Testament letter of Jude is traditionally attributed to him, though scholars have long debated whether the author is the apostle or another Jude.

What is unusual about him is not his life but his reputation, and the reputation is a story about neglect. Because his name was so close to that of the man who betrayed Christ, early Christians were reluctant to invoke him. He became, by accident of nomenclature, the apostle nobody asked. The devotional logic that followed is very human: a saint with little to do would be especially attentive, and especially glad, to be asked at last.

The modern devotion is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon in the United States, spread through shrines in Chicago and Baltimore and through the newspaper thank-you notices that still appear. That recent history is worth knowing. It does not make the devotion less real, but it does mean the practice people inherit is younger than they usually assume.

Why people turn to St. Jude Thaddeus

The patronage grew out of a problem: people avoided him because of his name. The tradition that formed around that avoidance is that Jude, having been overlooked for centuries, is the one most ready to take the case nobody else wants. So he became the apostle of hopeless causes, not because of anything he did, but because of what was done to him. People turn to him at the point where they have run out of options and the situation looks finished.

How to ask their intercession

Say plainly what the situation is and that you have run out of your own ideas about it. There is no formula, and no required number of days. Many people pray a novena, nine days of asking, which is a custom rather than a requirement. Asking St. Jude to pray for you is not a last resort in the sense of a final gamble, it is the ordinary Christian practice of asking someone already with God to pray alongside you.

A prayer to St. Jude Thaddeus

Most holy apostle, St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honours and invokes you universally as the patron of hopeless cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded to you, to bring visible and speedy help where help was almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and succour of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, and that I may praise God with you and all the elect for ever. Amen.

Traditional novena prayer to St. Jude, in wide circulation in English devotional manuals from the nineteenth century onward. Public domain.