At what we might call the “high end” and “low end” of the Twelve, some apostles do not have their own feast day. At the high end, Saints Peter & Paul share a Solemnity on 29 June. Beyond that, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul on 25 January and the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter on 22 February.
On the “low end,” today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Apostles Simon & Jude together. Unlike Saints Peter & Paul, Saints Simon & Jude do not have other days on the liturgical calendar. But the reason we celebrate them together isn’t because they’re second-rate apostles. Among the Twelve called by Jesus, there is no such category.
Rather, we remember Simon and Jude together because Tradition hands on that they met their martyrdom together in Persia, where they went to proclaim the Gospel, as Peter went to Rome, Thomas to India, and Paul throughout Asia Minor, etc.
Simon is identified as a “zealot.” In Jesus’ time, a zealot was an observant Jew who fervently sought to restore the kingdom of Israel. Restoring Israel as a kingdom meant getting rid of the occupying Romans and having a descendant of David on the throne. What distinguished zealots from their fellow Jews, who, by and large, also wanted Israel restored, was that the zealots resorted to violence as a means to achieving their desired end.
Jesus, too, was a revolutionary. But His is a revolution of love, not violence. The Lord’s most revolutionary act was to die on the cross. Saint Simon, then, was converted away from violence to the Gospel. Love has its own violence, which is experienced inwardly. A modern-day successor of the apostles, Saint Oscar Romero, summed this up beautifully:
We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness… The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword… It is the violence of love, of brotherhood…1Jude Thaddeus is the patron of hopeless causes and is held to be the author of the New Testament letter of Jude. It is a one-chapter book. If you want homework, go home tonight, take 5 minutes, and read the Letter of Jude.
An apostolos is Greek for one who is sent. In Greek, “martyr” simply means “witness.” Given that, we can safely assert that Jesus sent the Twelve to be martyrs, that is, witnesses of His life, death, and resurrection. In imitatio Christi, the Twelve were martyred.
We profess that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. When asked what it means to profess the Church as “apostolic,” most Catholics, understandably, would likely say something about apostolic succession. This, of course, is not incorrect. It is, however, incomplete.
In professing the Church as apostolic, we mean that the Church is sent. “Mass” comes from the Latin word missa, which, in addition to meaning "to be sent," is also closely related to missio, or mission. Mass concludes with a dismissal ("dismissal" is why Mass is called "Mass"). So, we are sent forth to proclaim the Gospel, to be martyrs, that is witnesses.
1 Oscar Romero. The Violence of Love. Trans. James R. Brockman, S.J., Farmington: Bruderhof, 2003, 25.↩
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