Patron Saint of Lost Causes

Why St. Jude Thaddaeus?

The reason is almost comic, and it is one of the better stories in the calendar. Jude was one of the twelve, but his name in Greek is close to Judas, and for centuries people were nervous about invoking him in case they were addressing the wrong man. So almost nobody asked him for anything. Out of that neglect grew the tradition: an apostle with so little work to do would surely take a serious interest in whatever finally came his way. He became the saint you turn to when the ordinary routes have closed, and the patronage stuck so firmly that his devotion is now one of the largest in the Church. There is a real point buried in the anecdote. A lost cause is not a category the Church recognises about people. Jude’s patronage is a standing refusal to accept that any situation is finally beyond help, and the people who pray to him tend to be exactly the ones who have been told otherwise by everyone else. St. Rita of Cascia is invoked for the same thing, usually for impossible family situations specifically, and there is no competition between them.

Who was St. Jude Thaddaeus?

Jude Thaddeus was one of the Twelve, named in the Gospel lists and distinguished there from Judas Iscariot, which turns out to be the fact that shaped everything about him afterwards. He asks Christ one recorded question at the Last Supper, about why he will show himself to the disciples and not to the world.

After Pentecost the traditions place him preaching in Mesopotamia and Persia, often paired with Simon the Zealot, and both are held to have been martyred there. He is usually shown carrying a club, the instrument of his death, with a flame above his head for Pentecost, and often with a medallion of Christ at his chest.

The letter of Jude in the New Testament is traditionally attributed to him, though the authorship is disputed. It is one page long and mostly a warning against people who have quietly stopped believing what they still profess.

The feast: October 28

October 28, shared with St. Simon the Zealot. The National Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago keeps solemn novenas five times a year rather than only in October, which tells you something about how this devotion is actually used: people come when the situation arrives, not when the calendar says to.

How to ask their intercession

Ask plainly, and name the situation rather than gesturing at it. Many Catholics pray a novena to St. Jude, nine days ending on or near October 28. Be cautious of chain-letter versions of his prayer that promise results in exchange for publication or repetition; that is not how the Church understands intercession, and it has attached itself to his devotion more than to most.