Saint Apostle Jude, commemorated on June 19, is identified by the tradition of the Church with Jude, also called Thaddaeus, one of the twelve apostles of the Savior. He must not be confused either with Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, or with Saint Apostle Thaddaeus of the seventy. Eastern tradition counts him among the Lord’s kinsmen according to the flesh and as the brother of Saint James, the first bishop of Jerusalem. Few words of his have been preserved for us in the Gospels: a single question asked at the Mystical Supper, and a short catholic epistle. Yet precisely this epistle sets before the Church, in only a few lines, one of her clearest witnesses concerning the guarding of the faith.
The Names of the Same Apostle
The reader who opens the Gospels meets the same disciple under different names, and this difference has caused confusion since ancient times. Saint Luke the Evangelist and the Book of Acts call him Jude of James (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13) – a naming that indicates a kinship, without itself specifying exactly what kind. Saints Matthew and Mark call him Thaddaeus, a name found in the lists of the apostles, while some sources and textual variants also add the name Lebbaeus or Levi. The clarification of this relationship is given by the apostle himself at the beginning of his epistle, where he plainly calls himself “the brother of James” (Jude 1).
The name Levi also received a spiritual interpretation in the hagiographic tradition. As the Lives of the Saints explain, “Levi means joined, or from the heart, or like a lion”; the synaxarion sees in this his cleaving to Christ with all his heart and the courage with which the apostle confessed the faith after coming to know that Jesus is the true Messiah. This is a spiritual reading of the name, not a philological demonstration.
A less known distinction should also be made here: Apostle Jude Thaddaeus, one of the twelve, is not the same as Saint Apostle Thaddaeus of the seventy, who after the Ascension was sent to King Abgar of Edessa and is commemorated on August 21. The hagiographic tradition has sometimes brought their labors close together in the regions of Mesopotamia and Edessa, but these are two distinct saints.
“The Kinsman of the Lord”: What Brotherhood According to the Flesh Means
The expression “the brethren of the Lord,” found in the Gospel (Matthew 13:55), requires clarification, because it has been and still is misused against the ever-virginity of the Mother of God. The Church does not understand by this other sons of the Most Holy Virgin. The perpetual virginity of the Mother of God – before birth, in birth, and after birth – is the clear and unshaken confession of the Orthodox faith. According to the ancient Eastern tradition, received in the liturgical life and iconography of the Church, these “brothers” are understood as sons of righteous Joseph from a previous marriage; another interpretation, more widespread in the West, considers them close relatives, cousins of the Lord. The certainty binding upon the faith concerns the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God; the exact degree of kinship belongs to exegetical tradition, and the East has generally received the first interpretation.
The hagiographic tradition also preserves an account of how these brothers behaved toward Christ at the beginning. When Joseph returned from Egypt, he is said to have divided his land among the sons he already had; and when he wished to give the Child Jesus a share in the inheritance, the other sons did not accept it. James alone received Him as a sharer in his portion, and for this reason he was later called “the brother of the Lord.” As for Jude, the Gospel itself bears witness that at first even the brethren of the Lord did not believe in Him (John 7:5).
From this the synaxarion also interprets the humility that runs through the apostle’s life. Although the name brother of the Lord would have belonged to him with the same right as to James, Saint Jude never took it for himself. At the very opening of his epistle he calls himself only “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (Jude 1). The synaxarion reads in this self-naming the sign of the humility of one who, remembering his unbelief at the beginning, did not dare to call himself brother of the Lord, but only servant of Christ. And this humility is the first teaching of his life, before any written word.
The Apostle’s Only Direct Word Preserved in the Gospel
Of the whole life of Saint Jude, the Gospels have preserved for us only one direct word of his: a question spoken at the Mystical Supper. When the Lord promised the disciples that He would manifest Himself to the one who loves Him, Jude asked Him: “Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” (John 14:22). The Holy Evangelist is careful to add immediately, “not Iscariot,” so that there may be no doubt about who is asking.
The tradition of the Church may read in this question the zeal that the whole world, not only the disciples, should know Christ. And the Lord’s answer moves the understanding of the disciples from an outward manifestation of glory to the mystical presence of the Father and the Son in the man who keeps His word. It is a question that opens one of the deepest promises of the Gospel.
The Preaching, As Far As Ararat
After the Descent of the Holy Spirit, Saint Jude took upon himself, like the other apostles, the labor of proclaiming the Gospel among the nations. According to the hagiographic tradition received in the synaxaria, he preached in Judea, Galilee, Samaria, and Idumea, then farther on in the cities of Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, reaching even the regions of Edessa and Armenia. Everywhere he scattered idolatrous deception and brought forth fruit, turning a multitude of people to the true faith. Thus, passing through many lands and enduring many labors, he finally came to the regions of Mount Ararat.
The Martyrdom
According to the same tradition, at Ararat, when the idol-worshipers saw that the people were turning in great number to Christ, they seized the apostle and, after long torments, hanged him upon wood in the form of the Cross, piercing him with arrows. Thus he completed his struggle and his course, passing to Christ God to receive the eternal crown of apostolic reward. This end, upon wood and in the likeness of the Cross, made him a partaker, in the very manner of his martyrdom, of the Master Whom he had preached.
The information concerning the preaching and martyrdom of Saint Jude has been transmitted to us chiefly by the hagiographic tradition set down in the synaxaria, founded upon the writings of Saint Theophylact and of the church historian Nicephorus. Eusebius of Caesarea preserves, through Hegesippus, a distinct testimony about the grandsons of Jude, called “the brother of the Lord according to the flesh,” who were examined in the time of Emperor Domitian – without, however, relating the whole missionary path and the martyrdom at Ararat.
The Catholic Epistle: The Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints
Saint Jude left us a single epistle, one of the shortest in the New Testament, yet weighty in dogmatic significance. The apostle testifies that at first he had wished to write to the faithful about the common salvation, for their joy, but was compelled to change his word when he saw the danger rising against the Church. Therefore he writes: “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3).
This word – the faith once for all delivered to the saints – is one of the abiding foundations of Holy Tradition. “The faith” here does not name only the inward act of trust in God, but also the apostolic content of the faith, received, confessed, and lived by the Church. It was delivered – not invented by men; delivered to the saints – that is, to the whole people of God; and delivered once for all – because the apostolic revelation cannot be replaced by another faith.
“Once for all” does not mean, however, that the Church cannot deepen, clarify, and formulate dogmatically the same faith. The Ecumenical Councils did not add a new revelation, but confessed and defined the apostolic faith when it was contested. Holy Tradition preserves unchanged the truth received, but confesses it livingly in every age. Therefore, to contend for the faith does not mean enmity, force, or polemical passion, but steadfastness in truth, confession, watchfulness, and a life according to the Gospel.
The danger against which the apostle writes did not come from outside, but from within. “For certain men crept in unawares,” he writes, men “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:4). They are those who use the name of grace to cover lawlessness, undermining the faith of the simple with flattering words. Precisely for this reason the exhortation is not to zeal in general, but to watchfulness and to the discernment of spirits: the flock must know the voice of the true Shepherd and guard itself against strangers who come to it under a fair appearance.
To strengthen this awakening, the apostle recalls the judgments of God from ancient times. He mentions the people delivered from Egypt, but afterward destroyed because of unbelief; he mentions “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation,” whom God has “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6); he mentions Sodom and Gomorrah, given over to eternal fire. All these stand as examples, so that no one may think himself beyond the danger of falling.
The epistle also contains a word attributed to Enoch, “the seventh from Adam,” who foretold the coming of the Lord “with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all” (Jude 1:14-15). This word, known from ancient Jewish tradition and found in a similar form in the writing called the Book of Enoch, has authority for the Church insofar as it was received into the canonical epistle of Saint Jude; its citation does not mean, however, that the whole writing attributed to Enoch is received into the canon. The use of this word was noted in the history of the reception of the epistle, without the epistle thereby being removed from the canon of the New Testament.
But the epistle does not end with severity and separation. After opening before the faithful the whole danger, the apostle shows them the way of steadfastness: “building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 1:20-21). And he also asks that the guarding of the faith not be separated from mercy toward the one who has gone astray: on those who waver have compassion, and others “save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 1:23).
The final word of the epistle is not about man’s power to preserve himself, but about God, “Who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 1:24). Thus the short epistle of Saint Jude remains, across the centuries, a word both about the discernment of spirits and about mercy – all the more eloquent because it comes from the one who, in humility, called himself only the servant of Christ and the brother of James.
The Interpretation of Saint Theophylact
Saint Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria, in his interpretation of the Catholic Epistles, first explains why the epistle of Saint Jude – together with those of James, Peter, and John – is called “catholic.” Unlike the epistles of Saint Paul, each sent to a particular Church or city, such as the Romans or the Corinthians, these are written, in his words, “comprehensively to the faithful” – to all those who are under the same faith, without being appointed for one nation or one city only. Hence the name catholic, that is, universal: the word of Saint Jude does not concern one particular community, but the whole Church, in every place and in every age.
In Iconography
Dionysius of Fourna directs, in the Painter’s Manual, that Saint Jude be depicted as young, with the beginning of a beard, holding in his hand a rolled scroll – a sign of apostolic preaching. In other representations he may hold a book, referring to the epistle that bears his name. These are iconographic landmarks of the tradition, not a rule excluding every other representation.
Through his holy prayers, O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.