A saint's day
St Jude the Apostle
The holy Apostle Jude, one of the Twelve, was descended from King David and was the son of Righteous Joseph the Betrothed by his first wife, and so he is called the Brother of the Lord. At first the Lord's brothers did not believe in Him, but Jude came to faith and humbly called himself only “the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.” After Pentecost he preached the Gospel in many lands, and his short Epistle calls Christians to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.”
The dates
- Kept on
- 19 June (2 July on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Orthodox Christians honor him with all the Twelve at the Synaxis of the Apostles and pray to him for firmness in the true faith.
His devotion as the saint of hopeless causes is Western, chiefly Catholic, and not an Orthodox patronage; the West also keeps him with St Simon and usually identifies him with Thaddeus.
In Russian he is named Iuda, a name not given at baptism, so name days for him are rare.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: