The Catholic Defender: Saints Simon and Jude

Jude is so named by St. Luke and Acts. (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13) Matthew and Mark call him Thaddeus. Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18

He is not mentioned elsewhere in the Gospels,

Actually, Jude had the same name as Judas Iscariot.

Alternate Names: In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, he is called Thaddeus (or Lebbaeus), and tradition often combines these as Jude Thaddeus or Judas Thaddaeus

 His original name, Judas, was shortened in English to "Jude" to avoid association with the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. 

Simon is mentioned on all four lists of the apostles. On two of them he is called “the Zealot.”

Authorship: While popular devotion traditionally linked him to the New Testament Letter of Jude, modern biblical scholars generally hold that he was not the author of that letter (which was likely written by Jude, the brother of James and relative of Jesus)

The Zealots were a Jewish sect that represented an extreme of Jewish nationalism. For them, the messianic promise of the Old Testament meant that the Jews were to be a free and independent nation.

God alone was their king, and any payment of taxes to the Romans—the very domination of the Romans—was a blasphemy against God.

No doubt some of the Zealots were the spiritual heirs of the Maccabees, carrying on their ideals of religion and independence.

They raided and killed, attacking both foreigners and “collaborating” Jews. They were chiefly responsible for the rebellion against Rome which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Jesus chose some unlikely people: a former Zealot, a former (crooked) tax collector, an impetuous fisherman, two “sons of thunder,” and a man named Judas Iscariot. Consider today Jesus has chosen many of us and called us to follow him.

Only God can create his divine life in human beings.

And God wills to do so, for all of us.