Author: Father Bel R. San Luis, SVD, of the Philippines (in Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation online). Source link here (connection problems in accessing the source article may occur from time to time)
Somebody once said, "Prayer has a way of influencing events and penetrating the minds of people which human reason and science cannot explain."
That was proven in the case of Jenny Apor, a partially disabled girl coming from a poor family in Cebu, on that unforgettable July 16, 2002 when she won the biggest-ever jackpot in Philippine game show history amounting R3.5 million.
* * *
Throughout the quiz show, "Game Ka Na Ba," she was clutching a novena booklet to St. Jude Thaddeus, fervently praying.
For the jackpot question, Kris Aquino, host of "Game KNB," asked: "Who was the Filipino front singer when the Beatles sang in Manila in the 1960s?"
* * *
Jenny was tongue-tied. Her face told it all – she didn’t know the answer. "I don’t know…" she stammered. Kris coaxed her, "Just say any name of a singer, even if it’s wrong."
Jenny blurted out from nowhere: "Pilita Corales!" And her guess was correct! Overwhelmed with joy, the handicapped girl brought home the P3.5 million jackpot.
* * *
In the same vein, Kris Aquino was herself a recipient of such a special favor from St. Jude. Kris at 18 years wanted so much to enter showbiz but her mother, then President Cory Aquino, put her foot down.
* * *
Kris was undaunted. Instead of sulking, the determined girl resorted to praying novenas to St. Jude at the archdiocesan shrine in San Miguel, Manila, a stone’s throw away from where she lived then, Malacañang.
She surely got her prayer granted because soon she entered showbiz. (But we know her love life suffered a setback. Apparently that wasn’t included in her petition to St. Jude).
* * *
The favor through St. Jude’s intercession is inexplicable. No wonder St. Jude Thaddeus is the saint of the impossible or hopeless cases. To be precise, it’s not "hopeless" but "difficult cases."
* * *
Another testimony comes from a lady acquaintance of mine whom I hadn’t met for some years but suddenly popped up at St. Jude Parish where I used to reside. Celia (not her real name) confided that her marriage was floundering after her husband had left them to work in Japan.
* * *
"In the beginning, we communicated frequently but afterwards correspondence came in trickles until it stopped. I heard he had a live-in partner," she said. "When he came home for vacation, he didn’t even stay with us preferring the company of the other woman’s relatives," she added.
"I wanted to save our family. So instead of giving up, I made novenas to St. Jude every Thursday commuting, rain or shine, from Bulacan to Manila."
* * *
Not too long afterwards when I met Celia, she was all excited. "Father, it’s a miracle," she gushed. After about two years separated from her husband, she related that out of the blue her husband called up to say hello and ask about the children.
"I couldn’t believe it," she said. "My husband mailed a nine-page letter explaining everything. He said he was coming home to us."
* * *
Among other things, he confided he left his live-in partner because after the "honeymoon" period, they had been constantly quarreling. (Did St. Jude cause it?).
Anyway, the last thing I heard was that Celia together with the children joined her husband in Japan.
* * *
The testimonies of Jenny Apor and Celia should indeed strengthen our faith in prayer and the miraculous power of St. Jude Thaddeus.
Do you have a difficult problem? Go to St. Jude.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Article: The Saint of the Sock Drawer
An article by James Martin, S.J., associate editor of America, The National Catholic Weekly, January 3, 2005 (source link here)
When I was 9 years old, I spied an advertisement in a magazine for a plastic statue of St. Jude. I can’t imagine which magazine this could have been, since my parents weren’t in the habit of leaving Catholic publications lying around the house, but apparently the photo of the statue was sufficiently appealing to convince me to drop $3.50 in an envelope. At the time, my greatest pleasure was ordering things through the mail. The cereal boxes that lined our kitchen shelves all boasted small squares on the back to be clipped out, filled in with my address and sent away, along with a dollar bill. A few weeks later a brown-paper package addressed to me would arrive in our mailbox. Few things filled me with more excitement.
While the most attractive offers were featured in comic books, these photos rarely represented what the postman eventually delivered. The “Terrifying Flying Ghost” on the back cover of a Spider-Man comic book turned out to be a plastic ball, a rubber band and a piece of white tissue paper. The “Fake Vomit” looked nothing like the real stuff and the “Monster Tarantula” was rather small. Worse, my six-week wait for “Sea Monkeys,” whose colorful advertisement showed smiling aquatic figures (the largest one wearing a crown) cavorting in a sort of sea city, was rewarded by a packet of shrimp eggs. Though the Sea Monkeys did hatch in a fishbowl on a chair in my bedroom, they were so small as to be nearly invisible, and none, as far as I could tell, wore a crown. (Sea Monkey City was nearly annihilated when I accidentally sneezed on it during my annual winter cold.)
Other purchases were more successful. My Swimming Tony the Tiger toy, whose purchase required eating my way through several boxes of Sugar Frosted Flakes to earn sufficient box tops, amazed even my parents with his swimming skills. The orange-and-black plastic tiger had arms that rotated and legs that kicked maniacally, and he was able to churn his way through the choppy waters of the stopped-up kitchen sink. One day Tony, fresh from a dip, slipped out of my fingers and dropped on the linoleum floor. Both of his arms fell off, marking the end of his short swimming career. I put the armless tiger in the fishbowl with the Sea Monkeys, who seemed not to mind the company.
Even with my predilection for all these mail-order purchases, I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book. My only other obsession at that time was a green pup tent I had seen in the Sears catalogue, but this too was thrown over in favor of St. Jude.
It wasn’t any interest on the part of my family, or any knowledge about St. Jude that drew me to him. I certainly knew nothing about him, other than what the magazine ad said: he was the patron saint of hopeless causes. But even if I had been interested in reading about him, there would have been little to read. For all his current-day popularity, Jude remains a mysterious figure. Though he is named as one of the Twelve Apostles, there are only three brief mentions of Jude in all of the New Testament. Two lists of the apostles, in fact, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, fail to name him at all. They instead mention a certain Thaddeus, giving rise to the name St. Jude Thaddeus. To confuse matters more, there is also a Jude listed as the “brother of Jesus” in the Gospel of Mark. And though some ancient legends mention his work in Mesopotamia and Persia, the Encyclopedia of Catholicism says candidly, “We have no reliable information about this obscure figure.”
But Jude’s story didn’t concern me. What appealed most was that he was patron of hopeless causes. Who knew what help someone like that could give me? A tiger that could swim in the kitchen sink was one thing, but a saint who could get me what I wanted was quite another. It was worth at least $3.50.
In a few weeks, I received in the mail a little package containing a nine-inch beige plastic statue, along with a booklet of prayers to be used for praying to my new patron. St. Jude the Beige, who held a staff and carried a sort of plate emblazoned with the image of a face (which I supposed was Jesus, though this was difficult to discern) was immediately given pride of place on top of the dresser in my bedroom.
At the time, I prayed to God only intermittently, and then mainly to ask for things. Please let me get an A on my next test. Please let me do well in Little League this year. I used to envision God as the Great Problem Solver, the one who would fix everything if I just prayed hard enough, used the correct prayers and prayed in precisely the right way. But when God couldn’t fix things (which seemed to be the case more frequently than I would have liked) I would turn to St. Jude. I figured that if it was beyond the capacity of God to do something, then surely it must be a lost cause, and it was time to call on Jude.
Fortunately, the booklet that accompanied the St. Jude statue included plenty of good prayers, and even featured one in Latin that began “Tantum ergo sacramentum....” I reserved the Latin prayer for only the most important impossible causes, like final exams. When I really wanted something I would say the Tantum ergo prayer, uncomprehendingly, three times on my knees.
St. Jude stood patiently atop my dresser until high school. My high school friends, when visiting our house, often used to hang out in my bedroom. And though I was by now fond of St. Jude, I was afraid of what my pals would think if they spotted a weird plastic statue standing on my dresser. So Jude was relegated to inside my sock drawer and brought out only on special occasions.
My faith was another thing, you could say, that was relegated to the sock drawer for the next several years. During high school, I made it to Mass more or less weekly; but later, in college, I became only an occasional churchgoer (though I still prayed to the Great Problem Solver). As my faith grew thinner and thinner, my affinity for St. Jude began to seem childish: silly, superstitious and faintly embarrassing.
That changed for me around age 26. Dissatisfied with life in the business world, I began giving thought to doing something else with my life, though at the time I had little idea of what that “something else” would be. All I knew was that after a few years in corporate America, I wanted out. From that banal sentiment, however, God was able to act. The Great Problem Solver was at work on a problem that I comprehended only dimly. In time, God would give me an answer to a question that I hadn’t even asked.
One evening, I came home and flipped on the television set. The local PBS station was airing a documentary about a Catholic priest named Thomas Merton. Though I had never heard of Merton, a parade of talking heads appeared onscreen to testify to his influence on their lives. In just a few minutes, I got the idea that Merton was bright, funny, holy and altogether unique. The documentary was sufficiently interesting to prompt me to track down, purchase and read his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. It captivated me as few books ever have.
Over the next two years, whenever I thought seriously about the future, the only thing that seemed to make sense was entering a religious order. There were, of course, some doubts, some false starts, some hesitations and some worries about embarrassing myself, but eventually I decided to quit my job and, at age 28, enter the Society of Jesus.
Upon entering the novitiate, I was surprised to learn that most of my fellow novices had strong devotions to one or another saint. They spoke with clear affection for their favorite saints, almost as if they knew them personally. One novice was fond of Dorothy Day, quoting her liberally during our weekly community meetings. Another talked a great deal about St. Thérèse of Lisieux. But though my brother novices were sincere in their devotions and patiently related the lives of their heroes and heroines to me, I now found the idea of praying to the saints wholly superstitious. I wondered, what’s the point? If God hears your prayers, why do you need the saints?
That question was answered when I discovered the collection of saints’ lives that filled the creaky wooden bookcases in the novitiate library.
The first selection I pulled from the shelves resulted from some serious prompting from one novice: “You’ve got to read The Story of a Soul,” he kept telling me. “Then you’ll understand why I like Thérèse so much.”
At this point, I knew little about “The Little Flower,” and imagined Thérèse as a sort of shrinking violet: timid, skittish and dull. So I was astonished when her autobiography revealed instead a lively, intelligent and strong-willed woman, someone I might like to have known. Reading her story led me to track down other biographies, some well known, some obscure, in our library: St. Stanislaus Kostka, a young Jesuit saint, who despite vigorous protests from his family, walked 450 miles to enter the Jesuit novitiate. St. Teresa of Avila, who decided, to the surprise of everyone and the dismay of many, to overhaul her Carmelite order. And Pope John XXIII who, I was happy to discover, was not only compassionate and innovative, but also witty.
Gradually, I found myself growing fonder of these saints and feeling a growing tenderness toward them. I began to see them as models of holiness relevant to my own life. And I began to appreciate the marvelous particularity of their lives. Each saint was holy in his or her own unique way, and revealed God’s way of celebrating individuality. As C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity: “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints!”
This gave me, and gives me, enormous consolation. For I eventually realized that none of us are meant to be Thérèse of Lisieux or Stanislaus Kostka or Pope John XXIII. “For me to be a saint means to be myself,” wrote Thomas Merton. Each saint lived his or her call to sanctity in different ways, and we are called to imitate them in their diversity. There is no need for anyone to do precisely what Mother Teresa or St. Francis of Assisi did. Instead, we are called to lead holy lives in our own places and own times and own ways. And that meant that my own quest for holiness was, ultimately, a quest to be myself.
In his beautiful Journal of a Soul, the autobiographical work that runs from his young adulthood almost to his death, Pope John XXIII meditated on this truth in an entry recorded in 1907. Reflecting on the lives of the saints, Angelo Roncalli notes that he is not meant to be a “dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, no matter how perfect.” He is meant rather to find sanctity in his own life, according to his own capacities and circumstances. “If Saint Aloysius had been as I am,” he concluded, “he would have been holy in a different way.”
In reading about the saints, I also discovered that I could easily recognize myself, or at least parts of myself, in their stories. This was still another aspect of their lives I appreciated: knowing that they had struggled with the same human frailties that everyone does. This, in turn, encouraged me to pray to them for help during particular times and for particular needs. I knew that Merton had struggled mightily with pride and egotism, so when combating the same I would pray for his intercession. When sick I would pray to Thérèse: she understood what it was to battle with self-pity and even depression during an illness. For compassion, to Aloysius. For a better sense of humor and an appreciation of the absurdities of life, to John XXIII.
Quite by surprise, then, I went from someone suspicious of affection for the saints to someone who counted it as one of the joys of my life.
Now I find myself introducing others to favorite saints and, likewise, still being introduced to new ones. And the way you discover a new saint is often similar to the way in which you meet a new friend. Maybe you’ll hear an admiring comment about someone and think, “I’d like to get to know that person.” When I started reading about English Catholic history, I knew that I wanted to meet St. Edmund Campion. Or perhaps you’re introduced by someone else who knows you’ll enjoy that person’s company. Like the novice who introduced me to Thérèse. Or you run across someone, totally by accident, during your day-to-day life. It wasn’t until my philosophy studies as a Jesuit that I read St. Augustine’s Confessions and fell in love with his writings and his way of speaking of God. These days I wonder which new saint I will encounter next.
Now I have a confession to make. At the beginning of this essay I said that I wasn’t sure what had led me to my affinity to St. Jude. But when I think about it, that’s not entirely true: I now know it was God who did so. God works in some very weird ways, and certainly moving a boy to begin a life of devotion to the saints through a magazine advertisement is one of the stranger ones. But grace is grace, and when I look back over my life I give thanks that I’ve met so many wonderful saints who pray for me, offer me comfort, give me examples of discipleship and help me along the way.
All of this, I like to think, is thanks to St. Jude, who, for all those years stuck inside the sock drawer, prayed for a boy who didn’t even know he was being prayed for.
When I was 9 years old, I spied an advertisement in a magazine for a plastic statue of St. Jude. I can’t imagine which magazine this could have been, since my parents weren’t in the habit of leaving Catholic publications lying around the house, but apparently the photo of the statue was sufficiently appealing to convince me to drop $3.50 in an envelope. At the time, my greatest pleasure was ordering things through the mail. The cereal boxes that lined our kitchen shelves all boasted small squares on the back to be clipped out, filled in with my address and sent away, along with a dollar bill. A few weeks later a brown-paper package addressed to me would arrive in our mailbox. Few things filled me with more excitement.
While the most attractive offers were featured in comic books, these photos rarely represented what the postman eventually delivered. The “Terrifying Flying Ghost” on the back cover of a Spider-Man comic book turned out to be a plastic ball, a rubber band and a piece of white tissue paper. The “Fake Vomit” looked nothing like the real stuff and the “Monster Tarantula” was rather small. Worse, my six-week wait for “Sea Monkeys,” whose colorful advertisement showed smiling aquatic figures (the largest one wearing a crown) cavorting in a sort of sea city, was rewarded by a packet of shrimp eggs. Though the Sea Monkeys did hatch in a fishbowl on a chair in my bedroom, they were so small as to be nearly invisible, and none, as far as I could tell, wore a crown. (Sea Monkey City was nearly annihilated when I accidentally sneezed on it during my annual winter cold.)
Other purchases were more successful. My Swimming Tony the Tiger toy, whose purchase required eating my way through several boxes of Sugar Frosted Flakes to earn sufficient box tops, amazed even my parents with his swimming skills. The orange-and-black plastic tiger had arms that rotated and legs that kicked maniacally, and he was able to churn his way through the choppy waters of the stopped-up kitchen sink. One day Tony, fresh from a dip, slipped out of my fingers and dropped on the linoleum floor. Both of his arms fell off, marking the end of his short swimming career. I put the armless tiger in the fishbowl with the Sea Monkeys, who seemed not to mind the company.
Even with my predilection for all these mail-order purchases, I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book. My only other obsession at that time was a green pup tent I had seen in the Sears catalogue, but this too was thrown over in favor of St. Jude.
It wasn’t any interest on the part of my family, or any knowledge about St. Jude that drew me to him. I certainly knew nothing about him, other than what the magazine ad said: he was the patron saint of hopeless causes. But even if I had been interested in reading about him, there would have been little to read. For all his current-day popularity, Jude remains a mysterious figure. Though he is named as one of the Twelve Apostles, there are only three brief mentions of Jude in all of the New Testament. Two lists of the apostles, in fact, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, fail to name him at all. They instead mention a certain Thaddeus, giving rise to the name St. Jude Thaddeus. To confuse matters more, there is also a Jude listed as the “brother of Jesus” in the Gospel of Mark. And though some ancient legends mention his work in Mesopotamia and Persia, the Encyclopedia of Catholicism says candidly, “We have no reliable information about this obscure figure.”
But Jude’s story didn’t concern me. What appealed most was that he was patron of hopeless causes. Who knew what help someone like that could give me? A tiger that could swim in the kitchen sink was one thing, but a saint who could get me what I wanted was quite another. It was worth at least $3.50.
In a few weeks, I received in the mail a little package containing a nine-inch beige plastic statue, along with a booklet of prayers to be used for praying to my new patron. St. Jude the Beige, who held a staff and carried a sort of plate emblazoned with the image of a face (which I supposed was Jesus, though this was difficult to discern) was immediately given pride of place on top of the dresser in my bedroom.
At the time, I prayed to God only intermittently, and then mainly to ask for things. Please let me get an A on my next test. Please let me do well in Little League this year. I used to envision God as the Great Problem Solver, the one who would fix everything if I just prayed hard enough, used the correct prayers and prayed in precisely the right way. But when God couldn’t fix things (which seemed to be the case more frequently than I would have liked) I would turn to St. Jude. I figured that if it was beyond the capacity of God to do something, then surely it must be a lost cause, and it was time to call on Jude.
Fortunately, the booklet that accompanied the St. Jude statue included plenty of good prayers, and even featured one in Latin that began “Tantum ergo sacramentum....” I reserved the Latin prayer for only the most important impossible causes, like final exams. When I really wanted something I would say the Tantum ergo prayer, uncomprehendingly, three times on my knees.
St. Jude stood patiently atop my dresser until high school. My high school friends, when visiting our house, often used to hang out in my bedroom. And though I was by now fond of St. Jude, I was afraid of what my pals would think if they spotted a weird plastic statue standing on my dresser. So Jude was relegated to inside my sock drawer and brought out only on special occasions.
My faith was another thing, you could say, that was relegated to the sock drawer for the next several years. During high school, I made it to Mass more or less weekly; but later, in college, I became only an occasional churchgoer (though I still prayed to the Great Problem Solver). As my faith grew thinner and thinner, my affinity for St. Jude began to seem childish: silly, superstitious and faintly embarrassing.
That changed for me around age 26. Dissatisfied with life in the business world, I began giving thought to doing something else with my life, though at the time I had little idea of what that “something else” would be. All I knew was that after a few years in corporate America, I wanted out. From that banal sentiment, however, God was able to act. The Great Problem Solver was at work on a problem that I comprehended only dimly. In time, God would give me an answer to a question that I hadn’t even asked.
One evening, I came home and flipped on the television set. The local PBS station was airing a documentary about a Catholic priest named Thomas Merton. Though I had never heard of Merton, a parade of talking heads appeared onscreen to testify to his influence on their lives. In just a few minutes, I got the idea that Merton was bright, funny, holy and altogether unique. The documentary was sufficiently interesting to prompt me to track down, purchase and read his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. It captivated me as few books ever have.
Over the next two years, whenever I thought seriously about the future, the only thing that seemed to make sense was entering a religious order. There were, of course, some doubts, some false starts, some hesitations and some worries about embarrassing myself, but eventually I decided to quit my job and, at age 28, enter the Society of Jesus.
Upon entering the novitiate, I was surprised to learn that most of my fellow novices had strong devotions to one or another saint. They spoke with clear affection for their favorite saints, almost as if they knew them personally. One novice was fond of Dorothy Day, quoting her liberally during our weekly community meetings. Another talked a great deal about St. Thérèse of Lisieux. But though my brother novices were sincere in their devotions and patiently related the lives of their heroes and heroines to me, I now found the idea of praying to the saints wholly superstitious. I wondered, what’s the point? If God hears your prayers, why do you need the saints?
That question was answered when I discovered the collection of saints’ lives that filled the creaky wooden bookcases in the novitiate library.
The first selection I pulled from the shelves resulted from some serious prompting from one novice: “You’ve got to read The Story of a Soul,” he kept telling me. “Then you’ll understand why I like Thérèse so much.”
At this point, I knew little about “The Little Flower,” and imagined Thérèse as a sort of shrinking violet: timid, skittish and dull. So I was astonished when her autobiography revealed instead a lively, intelligent and strong-willed woman, someone I might like to have known. Reading her story led me to track down other biographies, some well known, some obscure, in our library: St. Stanislaus Kostka, a young Jesuit saint, who despite vigorous protests from his family, walked 450 miles to enter the Jesuit novitiate. St. Teresa of Avila, who decided, to the surprise of everyone and the dismay of many, to overhaul her Carmelite order. And Pope John XXIII who, I was happy to discover, was not only compassionate and innovative, but also witty.
Gradually, I found myself growing fonder of these saints and feeling a growing tenderness toward them. I began to see them as models of holiness relevant to my own life. And I began to appreciate the marvelous particularity of their lives. Each saint was holy in his or her own unique way, and revealed God’s way of celebrating individuality. As C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity: “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints!”
This gave me, and gives me, enormous consolation. For I eventually realized that none of us are meant to be Thérèse of Lisieux or Stanislaus Kostka or Pope John XXIII. “For me to be a saint means to be myself,” wrote Thomas Merton. Each saint lived his or her call to sanctity in different ways, and we are called to imitate them in their diversity. There is no need for anyone to do precisely what Mother Teresa or St. Francis of Assisi did. Instead, we are called to lead holy lives in our own places and own times and own ways. And that meant that my own quest for holiness was, ultimately, a quest to be myself.
In his beautiful Journal of a Soul, the autobiographical work that runs from his young adulthood almost to his death, Pope John XXIII meditated on this truth in an entry recorded in 1907. Reflecting on the lives of the saints, Angelo Roncalli notes that he is not meant to be a “dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, no matter how perfect.” He is meant rather to find sanctity in his own life, according to his own capacities and circumstances. “If Saint Aloysius had been as I am,” he concluded, “he would have been holy in a different way.”
In reading about the saints, I also discovered that I could easily recognize myself, or at least parts of myself, in their stories. This was still another aspect of their lives I appreciated: knowing that they had struggled with the same human frailties that everyone does. This, in turn, encouraged me to pray to them for help during particular times and for particular needs. I knew that Merton had struggled mightily with pride and egotism, so when combating the same I would pray for his intercession. When sick I would pray to Thérèse: she understood what it was to battle with self-pity and even depression during an illness. For compassion, to Aloysius. For a better sense of humor and an appreciation of the absurdities of life, to John XXIII.
Quite by surprise, then, I went from someone suspicious of affection for the saints to someone who counted it as one of the joys of my life.
Now I find myself introducing others to favorite saints and, likewise, still being introduced to new ones. And the way you discover a new saint is often similar to the way in which you meet a new friend. Maybe you’ll hear an admiring comment about someone and think, “I’d like to get to know that person.” When I started reading about English Catholic history, I knew that I wanted to meet St. Edmund Campion. Or perhaps you’re introduced by someone else who knows you’ll enjoy that person’s company. Like the novice who introduced me to Thérèse. Or you run across someone, totally by accident, during your day-to-day life. It wasn’t until my philosophy studies as a Jesuit that I read St. Augustine’s Confessions and fell in love with his writings and his way of speaking of God. These days I wonder which new saint I will encounter next.
Now I have a confession to make. At the beginning of this essay I said that I wasn’t sure what had led me to my affinity to St. Jude. But when I think about it, that’s not entirely true: I now know it was God who did so. God works in some very weird ways, and certainly moving a boy to begin a life of devotion to the saints through a magazine advertisement is one of the stranger ones. But grace is grace, and when I look back over my life I give thanks that I’ve met so many wonderful saints who pray for me, offer me comfort, give me examples of discipleship and help me along the way.
All of this, I like to think, is thanks to St. Jude, who, for all those years stuck inside the sock drawer, prayed for a boy who didn’t even know he was being prayed for.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Prayers to St. Jude, saint of the impossible
Source link here.
Prayer used at the Shrine
Most Holy Apostle, St. Jude Thaddeus, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor who delivered your beloved Master into the hands of his enemies has caused you to be forgotten by many. But the Church honors you, and I invoke you as the special advocate of those who are in trouble and almost without hope. Help me to realize that through our faith we triumph over life's difficulties by the power of Jesus who loved us and gave his life for us. Come to my assistance that I may receive the consolation and succor of heaven in all my needs, trials, and sufferings, particularly (here make your request) and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
St. Jude, apostle of the Word of God, pray for us.
St. Jude, follower of the Son of God, pray for us.
St. Jude, preacher of the love of God, pray for us.
St. Jude, intercessor before God, pray for us.
St. Jude, friend of all in need, pray for us.
St. Jude, pray for us, and for all who invoke your aid.
A private prayer to St. Jude
Gracious God, your Son Jesus Christ gave us the confidence to call you Father. We believe you care for us. We believe also in the communion of saints. With confidence we ask St. Jude, patron of difficult cases, to pray with us, for our special intentions....
Thank you, God, for hearing our prayer. Amen.
Additional prayers to Saint Jude Thaddeus, Apostle
Dear Jesus, I want to follow you, I want to be your disciple. But I know my weakness and my need of help. May the example of Saint Jude, the forgotten saint, inspire me. May the intercession of Saint Jude, saint of the impossible, help me. By the prayers of all the saints, may I obtain the grace to surrender completely to your love for me. Amen.
God, the Apostle, Saint Jude Thaddeus, was a faithful servant and friend of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your Church honors him and invokes his intercession universally as the patron of those in difficulty who have found no other help. Grant that through St. Jude's intercessions, we may know your will for us, have the strength to do it, and enjoy the consolations of your Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, may Saint Jude intercede for us in all our necessities, tribulations and sufferings, particularly (here make your needs known). With him and with all the saints may we praise you with your Son and the Holy Spirit forever. Amen.
Prayer used at the Shrine
Most Holy Apostle, St. Jude Thaddeus, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor who delivered your beloved Master into the hands of his enemies has caused you to be forgotten by many. But the Church honors you, and I invoke you as the special advocate of those who are in trouble and almost without hope. Help me to realize that through our faith we triumph over life's difficulties by the power of Jesus who loved us and gave his life for us. Come to my assistance that I may receive the consolation and succor of heaven in all my needs, trials, and sufferings, particularly (here make your request) and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
St. Jude, apostle of the Word of God, pray for us.
St. Jude, follower of the Son of God, pray for us.
St. Jude, preacher of the love of God, pray for us.
St. Jude, intercessor before God, pray for us.
St. Jude, friend of all in need, pray for us.
St. Jude, pray for us, and for all who invoke your aid.
A private prayer to St. Jude
Gracious God, your Son Jesus Christ gave us the confidence to call you Father. We believe you care for us. We believe also in the communion of saints. With confidence we ask St. Jude, patron of difficult cases, to pray with us, for our special intentions....
Thank you, God, for hearing our prayer. Amen.
Additional prayers to Saint Jude Thaddeus, Apostle
Dear Jesus, I want to follow you, I want to be your disciple. But I know my weakness and my need of help. May the example of Saint Jude, the forgotten saint, inspire me. May the intercession of Saint Jude, saint of the impossible, help me. By the prayers of all the saints, may I obtain the grace to surrender completely to your love for me. Amen.
God, the Apostle, Saint Jude Thaddeus, was a faithful servant and friend of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your Church honors him and invokes his intercession universally as the patron of those in difficulty who have found no other help. Grant that through St. Jude's intercessions, we may know your will for us, have the strength to do it, and enjoy the consolations of your Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, may Saint Jude intercede for us in all our necessities, tribulations and sufferings, particularly (here make your needs known). With him and with all the saints may we praise you with your Son and the Holy Spirit forever. Amen.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sermon: St. Jude Thaddeus: A Crucible of Hope and Our Patron Saint
A sermon by Pastor Karen Siegfriedt of St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino, California, U.S.A., given October 25, 1998 (source link here)
Were it not for hope, the heart would break.
- A Sri Lankan steel fitter injures his back. He is filled with hope. Learning of a little shrine dedicated to St. Jude in the mountains of his country, he hires people to carry him there, and soon he can go back to work.
- Boris, a three year old canine boxer, vanishes on Christmas Eve while being shipped aboard a Delta jet from Florida to New York. His owner, was at the point of giving up all hope But he continued on. He carried out a devotion to St. Jude for several weeks. Six weeks later, the frightened dog was traced to an abandoned house.
- In 1964, a navy chaplain was sent to Vietnam with 6000 marines. He lost his faith and was filled with doubt and unbelief. For two months he experienced darkness and emptiness. In a faint yet glimmer of hope, he prayed to St. Jude, came out of his "dark night of the soul", and regained his faith. The chaplain's name is Cardinal John O'Connor, leader of New York's 2.5 million Catholics.
Hope: The one human emotion, the one virtue that keeps humankind afloat, diverting tragedy, healing the sick, comforting the desperate, deciding with some certainty that there is a way out. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. Hope is the lived out conviction that God?s power permeates the universe and that in the end, God's will, will be done
St. Jude is the symbol of hope; the patron saint of desperate causes. When you talk about Saint Jude, you talk about the world in despair because Jude is the last stop. That means, that when St. Jude becomes part of your devotional prayer life, you are reinforcing your desire to live and are refusing to be overcome by darkness. Who is this saint to whom more churches in the United States are dedicated than any other except for Mary? Who is this saint whose name is born by thousands of shrines and hospitals and to whom millions of petitions are addressed? What responsibility do we carry as a parish church which bears his name? This is the subject of today?s sermon as we celebrate the feast of St. Jude.
The name Jude, comes from the Hebrew word meaning, "I will praise the Lord." There is little description of Jude in the bible. Jude is listed in the gospel of Luke as the son of James and as being one of the twelve apostles. Jude is not the same person as Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Now the gospels of Matthew and Mark do not list Jude as one of the twelve apostles but rather Thaddeus. Thus, it had been assumed that Jude's surname is Thaddeus and therefore our patron saint is named, Jude Thaddeus. Other than being listed as one of the twelve apostles, Jude is recorded as being at the last supper, and as praying in the upper room with the other apostles after Jesus' resurrection. Most biblical scholars would say that St. Jude the apostle is not the same person as the author of the epistle of Jude found in the Christian Scriptures. So, what is known about St. Jude comes from sources outside the bible. It is difficult to determine which written accounts of Jude are accurate and which are legend. Perhaps the most widely held account was recorded by the distinguished church historian, Eusebius, during the forth century. The story goes something like this.
King Abgar Ukkama, a brilliant and successful monarch of Mesopotamia was dying from a terrible physical disorder which no human power could heal. Having heard about Jesus' ability to heal, the King sent Jesus a letter, begging for relief from his disease. Jesus promised that he would send one of his disciples to cure the king's disease, and at the same time to bring salvation to him and his people. After Jesus' death and resurrection, Jude Thaddeus was sent to Edessa to heal the King. After examining the king's faith (in the healing power of Jesus), Jude laid his hands on the king and healed him of his infirmities. At daybreak, king Abgar instructed his citizens to assemble and to hear the preaching of the Good News by Jude Thaddeus. It was in this manner that the gospel was spread to that area of Northern Iran.
There is a thirteenth century manuscript in Armenia that describes Jude's death. This manuscript records that after having won favor from King Abgar with his miracles in Edessa, the apostle pressed eastward to Armenia to the court of King Sanatrouk, son of Abgar's sister. The apostle "arrived at the king's court to preach the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and there performed miracles and cured all kinds of sicknesses. Many believed his words and were baptized, including the king's daughter. Upon learning of this, king Sanatrouk grew wrathful and sent one of his princes to murder the apostle and his own daughter. Jude was forced to climb up to a ledge raised in the midst of rock. Stretching out his arms in prayer, Jude cried: "my Savior Jesus Christ, do not abandon my diocese, do not leave the people in the errors of idolatry, but illuminate them at the filling moment in the knowledge of your faith." Then the king's men murdered Jude with a sword and buried him in the midst of an overturned rock."
Are these events based on fact or fiction? Are the cures and acts of grace bestowed upon people who turn to St. Jude, miracles, or are they coincidences? We will never know the answer. However, this we do know. St. Jude is the symbol and crucible of hope for many Christians. Were it not for hope, the human heart would break. Hope is one of the great theological virtues. It is what keeps us going when darkness obscures the light. Hope is different from wishing. Wishing means to place before one's mind, a desired object or goal and waiting for a favorable outcome. But hope is remembering what God has already done in history and what God has promised to do in the future. Hope is the realization that the love of God has permanently affected humankind and that the whole creation will eventually be lifted up to God. "All things work together for good to them that love God."
As the second Christian millennium draws to a close, America is caught up in one of the most fervent religious revivals in its history. We see it in the zeal of the religious right, the passion of the New Age seekers, and the yearning of the hearts of those who are searching for meaning. Our nation has been most blest among nations. Our people have been seen as the best, brightest, richest, prettiest, smartest, and resiliently optimistic. Yet now, we are perhaps the most desperate, a depressed, self satisfied and spiritually empty people. We are now turning our spirits inward to explore the emptiness that no American military or political victory seems able to fill, or that no material gain or scientific milestone can dispel. We found out that a small, poverty stricken country in Southeast Asia could cripple our economic security, and thus have been brought face to face with our own vulnerability. The fitting recourse to this sense of loss of security must be hope, for without hope, desperation waits to fill the void.
So how do we increase our hope? When I hear this question, I like to look at a group of exemplar Christians who maintain an incredible sense of hope in the midst of poverty, chaos, corruption, and disease. This group is called the Sisters of Charity, a group of nuns who was founded by Mother Theresa. These sisters are able to pick up rat bitten, infected lepers off the dirty, noisy streets of Calcutta and show these discarded human beings, the love of God. These sisters do not get discouraged. They do not give up. They do not lose hope. Why? What is it that allows them to maintain a non-anxious presence, a presence of hope, in the midst of worldly darkness and despair? A lot of it has to do with their prayer life. Each day, they put aside an hour to practice devotional prayer. It is a simple, innocent approach to religion, where God and the communion of saints are called upon in intercessory and petitionary prayer; where God's saving acts in history are rehearsed over and over again so that they can remember God's faithfulness when there is no apparent evidence in the present moment. Devotional prayer is a means of placing one's mind, and heart, and soul, and hands into God's presence, and allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to permeate one's thoughts, words, and actions.
Now many Episcopalians scoff at devotional practices especially when it has to do with praying with and to the saints of our church. Most of us are at a different stage of faith than devotional practice. Our approach tends to be more intellectual. We would rather study the faith than pray it. We would rather be in control than abandon ourselves into the arms or God. However, I do notice that the people of St. Jude's light candles during Sunday worship. I notice that the people of St. Jude's offer prayers of petition each Sunday. Perhaps at a deep level we know that devotion to God and prayer has power to give us a the hope, without which the heart would break.
Now what does this mean for us, the people of St. Jude's in Cupertino,whose church bears the name of the Saint of desperate causes? Well there are a lot of desperate people out there who need to experience the light of Christ; who need to be coaxed out of despair and into hope. We need to provide a place where anyone can come and be reminded that God is intimately working in the world, even when there is no evidence in their lives.
Now this weekend, your vestry has come up with a vision for St. Jude's in Cupertino. They envision this place to become a spirit-filled church where every Sunday is like Easter Sunday. This means that we are present each Sunday at worship, that the pews are overflowing with joyful and spirit-filled people, raising their voices in song and prayer such that the presence of God can be felt even to the rafters. What an oasis of hope in Santa Clara County we could become! But we have work to do. We need to learn how to pray and to turn to a life of prayer, out of which hope rises up. "It is very important to cross the threshold of hope, and not to stop before it, but to let oneself be led." St. Jude, help us to cross that threshold of hope.
Amen
Were it not for hope, the heart would break.
- A Sri Lankan steel fitter injures his back. He is filled with hope. Learning of a little shrine dedicated to St. Jude in the mountains of his country, he hires people to carry him there, and soon he can go back to work.
- Boris, a three year old canine boxer, vanishes on Christmas Eve while being shipped aboard a Delta jet from Florida to New York. His owner, was at the point of giving up all hope But he continued on. He carried out a devotion to St. Jude for several weeks. Six weeks later, the frightened dog was traced to an abandoned house.
- In 1964, a navy chaplain was sent to Vietnam with 6000 marines. He lost his faith and was filled with doubt and unbelief. For two months he experienced darkness and emptiness. In a faint yet glimmer of hope, he prayed to St. Jude, came out of his "dark night of the soul", and regained his faith. The chaplain's name is Cardinal John O'Connor, leader of New York's 2.5 million Catholics.
Hope: The one human emotion, the one virtue that keeps humankind afloat, diverting tragedy, healing the sick, comforting the desperate, deciding with some certainty that there is a way out. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. Hope is the lived out conviction that God?s power permeates the universe and that in the end, God's will, will be done
St. Jude is the symbol of hope; the patron saint of desperate causes. When you talk about Saint Jude, you talk about the world in despair because Jude is the last stop. That means, that when St. Jude becomes part of your devotional prayer life, you are reinforcing your desire to live and are refusing to be overcome by darkness. Who is this saint to whom more churches in the United States are dedicated than any other except for Mary? Who is this saint whose name is born by thousands of shrines and hospitals and to whom millions of petitions are addressed? What responsibility do we carry as a parish church which bears his name? This is the subject of today?s sermon as we celebrate the feast of St. Jude.
The name Jude, comes from the Hebrew word meaning, "I will praise the Lord." There is little description of Jude in the bible. Jude is listed in the gospel of Luke as the son of James and as being one of the twelve apostles. Jude is not the same person as Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Now the gospels of Matthew and Mark do not list Jude as one of the twelve apostles but rather Thaddeus. Thus, it had been assumed that Jude's surname is Thaddeus and therefore our patron saint is named, Jude Thaddeus. Other than being listed as one of the twelve apostles, Jude is recorded as being at the last supper, and as praying in the upper room with the other apostles after Jesus' resurrection. Most biblical scholars would say that St. Jude the apostle is not the same person as the author of the epistle of Jude found in the Christian Scriptures. So, what is known about St. Jude comes from sources outside the bible. It is difficult to determine which written accounts of Jude are accurate and which are legend. Perhaps the most widely held account was recorded by the distinguished church historian, Eusebius, during the forth century. The story goes something like this.
King Abgar Ukkama, a brilliant and successful monarch of Mesopotamia was dying from a terrible physical disorder which no human power could heal. Having heard about Jesus' ability to heal, the King sent Jesus a letter, begging for relief from his disease. Jesus promised that he would send one of his disciples to cure the king's disease, and at the same time to bring salvation to him and his people. After Jesus' death and resurrection, Jude Thaddeus was sent to Edessa to heal the King. After examining the king's faith (in the healing power of Jesus), Jude laid his hands on the king and healed him of his infirmities. At daybreak, king Abgar instructed his citizens to assemble and to hear the preaching of the Good News by Jude Thaddeus. It was in this manner that the gospel was spread to that area of Northern Iran.
There is a thirteenth century manuscript in Armenia that describes Jude's death. This manuscript records that after having won favor from King Abgar with his miracles in Edessa, the apostle pressed eastward to Armenia to the court of King Sanatrouk, son of Abgar's sister. The apostle "arrived at the king's court to preach the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and there performed miracles and cured all kinds of sicknesses. Many believed his words and were baptized, including the king's daughter. Upon learning of this, king Sanatrouk grew wrathful and sent one of his princes to murder the apostle and his own daughter. Jude was forced to climb up to a ledge raised in the midst of rock. Stretching out his arms in prayer, Jude cried: "my Savior Jesus Christ, do not abandon my diocese, do not leave the people in the errors of idolatry, but illuminate them at the filling moment in the knowledge of your faith." Then the king's men murdered Jude with a sword and buried him in the midst of an overturned rock."
Are these events based on fact or fiction? Are the cures and acts of grace bestowed upon people who turn to St. Jude, miracles, or are they coincidences? We will never know the answer. However, this we do know. St. Jude is the symbol and crucible of hope for many Christians. Were it not for hope, the human heart would break. Hope is one of the great theological virtues. It is what keeps us going when darkness obscures the light. Hope is different from wishing. Wishing means to place before one's mind, a desired object or goal and waiting for a favorable outcome. But hope is remembering what God has already done in history and what God has promised to do in the future. Hope is the realization that the love of God has permanently affected humankind and that the whole creation will eventually be lifted up to God. "All things work together for good to them that love God."
As the second Christian millennium draws to a close, America is caught up in one of the most fervent religious revivals in its history. We see it in the zeal of the religious right, the passion of the New Age seekers, and the yearning of the hearts of those who are searching for meaning. Our nation has been most blest among nations. Our people have been seen as the best, brightest, richest, prettiest, smartest, and resiliently optimistic. Yet now, we are perhaps the most desperate, a depressed, self satisfied and spiritually empty people. We are now turning our spirits inward to explore the emptiness that no American military or political victory seems able to fill, or that no material gain or scientific milestone can dispel. We found out that a small, poverty stricken country in Southeast Asia could cripple our economic security, and thus have been brought face to face with our own vulnerability. The fitting recourse to this sense of loss of security must be hope, for without hope, desperation waits to fill the void.
So how do we increase our hope? When I hear this question, I like to look at a group of exemplar Christians who maintain an incredible sense of hope in the midst of poverty, chaos, corruption, and disease. This group is called the Sisters of Charity, a group of nuns who was founded by Mother Theresa. These sisters are able to pick up rat bitten, infected lepers off the dirty, noisy streets of Calcutta and show these discarded human beings, the love of God. These sisters do not get discouraged. They do not give up. They do not lose hope. Why? What is it that allows them to maintain a non-anxious presence, a presence of hope, in the midst of worldly darkness and despair? A lot of it has to do with their prayer life. Each day, they put aside an hour to practice devotional prayer. It is a simple, innocent approach to religion, where God and the communion of saints are called upon in intercessory and petitionary prayer; where God's saving acts in history are rehearsed over and over again so that they can remember God's faithfulness when there is no apparent evidence in the present moment. Devotional prayer is a means of placing one's mind, and heart, and soul, and hands into God's presence, and allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to permeate one's thoughts, words, and actions.
Now many Episcopalians scoff at devotional practices especially when it has to do with praying with and to the saints of our church. Most of us are at a different stage of faith than devotional practice. Our approach tends to be more intellectual. We would rather study the faith than pray it. We would rather be in control than abandon ourselves into the arms or God. However, I do notice that the people of St. Jude's light candles during Sunday worship. I notice that the people of St. Jude's offer prayers of petition each Sunday. Perhaps at a deep level we know that devotion to God and prayer has power to give us a the hope, without which the heart would break.
Now what does this mean for us, the people of St. Jude's in Cupertino,whose church bears the name of the Saint of desperate causes? Well there are a lot of desperate people out there who need to experience the light of Christ; who need to be coaxed out of despair and into hope. We need to provide a place where anyone can come and be reminded that God is intimately working in the world, even when there is no evidence in their lives.
Now this weekend, your vestry has come up with a vision for St. Jude's in Cupertino. They envision this place to become a spirit-filled church where every Sunday is like Easter Sunday. This means that we are present each Sunday at worship, that the pews are overflowing with joyful and spirit-filled people, raising their voices in song and prayer such that the presence of God can be felt even to the rafters. What an oasis of hope in Santa Clara County we could become! But we have work to do. We need to learn how to pray and to turn to a life of prayer, out of which hope rises up. "It is very important to cross the threshold of hope, and not to stop before it, but to let oneself be led." St. Jude, help us to cross that threshold of hope.
Amen
Sunday, May 3, 2009
San Giuda Taddeo by Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533), also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch engraver and painter, born and mainly active in Leiden, who was among the first Dutch exponents of genre painting and is generally regarded as one of the finest engravers in the history of art. He was the pupil of his father, from whose hand no works are known, and of Cornelis Engelbrechtsz, but both of these were painters whereas Lucas himself was principally an engraver. Where he learnt engraving is unknown, but he was highly skilled in that art at a very early age: the earliest known print by him (Mohammed and the Murdered Monk) dates from 1508, when he was perhaps only 14, yet reveals no trace of immaturity in inspiration or technique.
Friday, May 1, 2009
May Messages of Thanks
Publish your messages of thanks (and special intentions) to St. Jude for May here.
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