Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is October the twenty-eighth, the feast of Simon and Jude, Apostles. O God, who built your Church upon the witness of your Apostles, with Christ Jesus as the capstone, grant that we who hear their word may be fashioned into a temple holy in your sight. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

A reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians.

Brothers and sisters: You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

The Responsorial Psalm. Their message goes out through all the earth.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day pours out the word to day, and night to night imparts knowledge.

Their message goes out through all the earth.

Not a word nor a discourse whose voice is not heard; through all the earth their voice resounds, and to the ends of the world, their message.

Their message goes out through all the earth.

Alleluia, alleluia. We praise you, O God, we acclaim you as Lord; the glorious company of Apostles praise you. Alleluia, alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.

Jesus went up to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called a Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

The Gospel of the Lord.

The Church is a house, and a house begins with a foundation laid before any wall rises. Paul names it: the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Cornelius a Lapide notes that the Apostles are foundation only by what they received and handed on, while Christ alone is both the rock beneath and the stone that crowns. Whatever the Apostles bear, they bear from him.

Simon and Jude are two of those stones. In Luke they appear only in a list. They have no miracle and no sermon, only a name. Yet they bear the weight of the whole structure. A foundation is buried, and its glory is to be unseen. St. Augustine teaches that whoever plans a lofty building must first think of the foundation of humility. The higher the fabric is to rise, the deeper the excavation must go. Here is the first lesson of the feast. The Church was raised by hidden fidelity as much as by renowned preaching, and the holiness that sustains the world is often wholly unnoticed.

Luke places the choosing of the Twelve after a night of prayer. The Son of God, who needs no counsel, passes the dark hours in communion with the Father before he names a single Apostle. St. Ambrose draws the conclusion directly. If Christ spent a whole night in prayer, what ought you to do when you are about to undertake anything of weight? The Church's foundation was laid on a mountain, at night, on his knees. Every vocation, and every decision that shapes a soul, belongs there too.

Consider whom he chose. Simon is called the Zealot, a man marked by fierce, burning passion for Israel, who might once have taken up the sword. He stands in the same list as Matthew, who sat at a tax table in the service of Rome. Nothing but Christ could bind such men into one wall. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on this very epistle, teaches that Christ is the cornerstone who joins two walls meeting from different directions, Jew and Gentile, into one building. The same grace works in every parish. Temperaments that would never choose one another are chosen together, and charity is the mortar. Simon's zeal was not destroyed but redirected. It was turned from the sword to the Cross and from a kingdom of this world to the one that has no end.

Jude, called also Thaddeus, left a brief epistle exhorting the faithful to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. Haydock observes that he writes as a guardian of the deposit. The Apostles did not invent the faith, and they cannot revise it. They received it, and we receive it from them. A stone that moves from the foundation endangers the whole house.

Luke closes the list with a warning: Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. He too was chosen on the mountain and named an Apostle, yet a stone laid beside the cornerstone can still refuse to rest on it. No office and no proximity to grace secures the soul. Only ab