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10/28/26 Hopeless Cases? · Omnia Christus

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Today, as I'm sure you noticed, we have this feast of Saints Simon and Jude.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we really don't know very much at all about Saints Simon and Jude,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: except that they were apostles.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have this gospel today, which simply lists their names.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there we don't even know whether it's Judas the son of James or Judas
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: the brother of James, because it just says Judas of James.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there again we have a certain ambivalence.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: But tradition holds that they were apostles.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously we have in the gospel they were apostles and tradition holds
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: that they went out to preach the gospel across the known world at their time and
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: that Saint Judas preached the gospel in Armenia and Simon perhaps in Georgia and
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: over into Egypt and even some say up into England possibly.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So certainly they had apostolic missions, they died martyrs' deaths.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why Judas,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: often called Jude in English so as not to confuse him with Judas Iscariot,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is the patron saint of hopeless causes?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've heard that, that people often pray to Saint Jude for hopeless causes.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the origin of that story is that people thought, well,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: nobody's praying to him because it's too easy to confuse his name
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: with Judas Iscariot, or you wouldn't want to do that.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he doesn't get very many prayers, so he'll take whatever he can get.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: if anything you need about or anything is a hopeless cause,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: he will help you out with that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a lovely legend.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about the context of this gospel though and the fact
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: that we celebrate the Feasts of the Apostles with something that I made the mistake
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: of doing the other day,
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: which was arguing with a Protestant And the reason why it was a mistake was
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: because this very sincere individual was completely ignorant of anything to do
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: with anything.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he would always sort of rely on the challenge of saying, well,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: show me in Scripture,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: because he objected very much to,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: of all things,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: the fact that we would have the Eucharist every week,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: maintaining that the true celebration of the Eucharist ought to be done once
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: a month.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because in evangelical churches,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: that's what they do because they lost the sense of the Lord's Day and the sense of
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: the Eucharist.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so this became this little tangential thing,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: which, okay, maybe whatever, we'll do that maybe once a month, if at all.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no historical basis for that whatsoever.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: All even of mainline Christian churches always gathered on the Lord's Day
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: to celebrate the Eucharist.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact is that you can't show that from Scripture.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a possible response is,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: well, neither can you show from Scripture that it should be celebrated once a month.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: But who's right if, you know, you're simply like, well, show it to me in Scripture.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Scripture doesn't say,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture doesn't say celebrate the Eucharist once a week or once a day or once
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: a month or once a year.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Christ simply says, do this in memory of me and leaves it at that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what are we to make of that?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think we have this detective work to say,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: okay, well, you know, we're all Christians.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: We all believe that Christ is the Messiah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: We've had personal encounters with Christ.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: We want to know what we're supposed to do.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: What does Christ want me to do?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: there's this book,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Scriptures, that claims to be authoritative, seems to be testimonies of Christ.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what does Christ want me to do about the Eucharist?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: How ought I to celebrate that?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't say in my book, this Bible, this book of scriptures.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So what do I do then?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what did Christ do?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Did Christ sit down and write a book and send it to the Gideons to have it published
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: and then leave on a cloud?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, he did not.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Christ came.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he appointed certain people to continue his work.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the apostles.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some of whom we celebrate today, St. Simon of Judah, whom we don't know very much.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But we do know that they went around continuing the work of Christ.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what was that?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they went around and they laid their hands on successors.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: They established churches.
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  SPEAKER_00: They started a tradition, an apostolic tradition.
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  SPEAKER_00: That has passed on unbroken down to this present time.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want to know when I should celebrate the Eucharist,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: how often I should do it, what did the apostles do?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: What did their successors do?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: What did they write down?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: What's that tradition that we have?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That same tradition that,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: gave us those scriptures because it was the apostles and their successors
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: who gathered together the scriptures who decided what was scripture and what wasn't
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: and gave us this Bible.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it all comes back to the apostles.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It all comes back to these characters like saints Simon and Jude who we celebrate today.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're so important because they are the link He handed his church over to them.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: They handed it on to us.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the way that the church works.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the way that the apostolic tradition functions.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So today we need to be thankful for that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We need to remember that if we get into arguments,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: it all goes back to authority, goes back to Christ, what he did.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: What did he come to establish and found?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: He founded a church guided by the Holy Spirit.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then it comes down to us.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: How do I walk in that tradition?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know what I'm supposed to do?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do I listen to the Holy Spirit in my own context?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I do that by listening to those who stand in that tradition.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: To that church that speaks in unbroken line from Christ through the Holy Spirit.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not that everyone in that is perfect, but that Christ is so good and great.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: He can even use imperfect instruments such as Saints Simon and Jude and all of us
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  SPEAKER_00: to communicate his truth to the world.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let us ask for the grace to continue to stand in that great tradition.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: To pass on that tradition in our own minds,
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  SPEAKER_00: to be apostles,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: just as those apostles were sent out,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Christ wishes to send us out from this Eucharist,
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  SPEAKER_00: from this place,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: to continue that work, to take his word, to spread his love to all around us.