Saints Simon And Jude, Apostles

First Point

Saint Simon and Saint Jude, seeing the miracles performed by Jesus Christ, despised and quit the world in order to follow him and to be numbered among his disciples. How happy you are to have the same destiny and the advantage of having left the world! You ought to value this grace as one of the greatest you have received in your whole life.  Thank God for it every day, and in order to live according to the spirit of your vocation, despise the world, consider it as the enemy of Jesus Christ, and be always opposed to it and to all its maxims. Havea horror of frequenting it, and do not have communication with people who live in it, except insofar as necessity obliges you to do so.This is the way to protect against all its snares and all the dangers you meet there and to preserve the spirit of your vocation. By communicating with the world, we adopt its spirit, which is contrary to that of Jesus Christ. Because the two cannot exist together in a soul, if we fillourselves with the spirit of the world, we necessarily lose that of Jesus Christ.Today, ask God earnestly through the intercession of the two holy Apostles whose feast the Church is celebrating to inspire you always with more and more separation from the corrupt world and with an attraction to the holy way of the life of Jesus Christ.

Second Point

These holy Apostles devoted themselves to preaching the Gospel, and they converted many souls to God. The devil and the world, unable to tolerate their apostolic labors and the good they were doing to establish the Gospel, stirred up such cruel persecutions against them that they were finally put to death. For these saints, by preaching the Gospel, were destroying the kingdom of the devil and fighting against the maxims of the world. If you carry out your ministry faithfully and work effectively and successfully for the salvation of the souls entrusted to you, persecution from the devil or from the world will always be your portion. If you hate the world and oppose its practices and maxims, be assured that it will also hate you and declare open warfare against you.² Prepare to sustain this. By prayer more than by any other means, you will be able to prepare for this combat, because it belongs to God to fight in you and for you against the devil and the world. It can only be by his special help that you will overcome them both. Far from growing sad over this, rejoice because you are at war with them. When you are displeasing to men³ will be a sign that you are pleasing to Jesus Christ, for the world can love only those who love it and have the same practices that it has.⁴

Third Point

These two holy Apostles had such an ardent zeal for the establishment and the progress of the Christian religion that nothing was able to stop them. All the threats that could be uttered against them and all the tortures they were made to endure could not prevent them from proclaiming Jesus Christ and making him known. You will never do anything that can promote your own salvation and that of your neighbor without the world’s opposing it. Suffer these contradictions with courage; remain steadfast in the practice of what is right, in spite of all the obstacles you may encounter. God will bless all you do with zeal for love of him, and you will be victorious over those who will oppose what you are doing for God. Do not bother to please those whom Jesus Christ could not please and who are his declared enemies. Often say with Saint Paul, If I were pleasing men, I would not be worthy to be a servant of Jesus Christ.⁵ However, it is not enough for you to be true servants of Jesus Christ; you are further obliged to make him known and adored by the children whom you instruct. The care you must have for your own perfection ought to lead you to do this.

Historical Context

Simon is unknown except for the mention of him as one of the 12 Apostles. He was called the Zealot in Luke 6:15 by Christ and in Acts 1:13, which could mean only that he was a man of zeal for the Law rather than a member of the Zealot party, as stated in Mark (3:18). There are many apocryphal stories about him, including his martyrdom in Persia with Jude. Jude cannot be positively identified as the author of the Epistle that bears this name nor as the brother of James, despite the translation of the first verse of this epistle. What is certain is that he was one of the Apostles, sometimes called Thaddeus (which might mean deep-chested). Beyond that, none of the details of his life and death, as in the case of Simon, is more than apocryphal.

Scripture Citation

1. Number 181, one of the six meditations in the Additions, is found at the end both of the original edition and of this edition
2. Jn 15:18–19
3. Gal 1:10
4. Jn 15:19
5. Gal 1:10