Holy Apostle Jude

Jude, also called Thaddaeus and in some manuscripts Lebbaeus, was one of the Twelve, the brother of James (the son of Alphaeus, by older tradition, or the Brother of God, by another reading), and, the Church holds, a kinsman of the Lord on the side of Joseph the Betrothed. The Gospel of John carefully calls him 'Judas, not Iscariot' (John 14:22), so that the readers should not confuse him with the traitor.

On the night of the Mystical Supper he put one question to the Lord, the only words the Gospels record from him: 'Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?' The Lord's answer is one of the great sayings of the farewell discourse, that the one who keeps his word will be loved of the Father, and the Father and the Son will come and make their abode with him.

He is the author of the short catholic epistle that bears his name, twenty-five verses long. He calls himself in it not an apostle but a servant of Christ and a brother of James, the great bishop of Jerusalem. The letter sharply warns the early churches against teachers who turn grace into license, and ends with a doxology sung in Orthodox services to this day.

After Pentecost he is said to have preached in Judaea, Galilee, Samaria, and Idumaea, and afterwards in Mesopotamia, Edessa, Persia, and Armenia, where with Bartholomew he is honored as the founding apostle of the Armenian Church. He died a martyr, the tradition relates, at Ararat, around the year seventy-two. His memory is kept on the nineteenth of June.