A Novena to Saint Jude
Apostle of hopeless cases
An Apostle Nearly Forgotten
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
Saint Jude is one of the Twelve, though the Gospels give him almost nothing to say or do. Matthew and Mark list him among the apostles as "Thaddeus"; Luke and Acts call him "Judas son of James" instead, and the Church has never fully reconciled the two names, settling instead on both, joined, as insurance against losing him in the confusion.
The One Question He Asked
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
Saint Jude's single recorded word is a question, put to Jesus at the Last Supper: "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" (John 14:22). It is a reasonable thing to ask, since a private revelation calls for some explanation, and it draws one of the longer answers Jesus gives that night, about the Father and the Son making their home in anyone who loves them.
A Name Too Close to Judas
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
For most of Christian history Saint Jude's own name worked against him: it is the same name as Judas Iscariot's, and for centuries the devout avoided invoking a saint who shared it with the betrayer. He was, quite literally, the apostle nobody asked. The modern devotion turns that history on its head, reading the old neglect as exactly why he now hears the causes everyone else has given up on.
Ten Years in Mesopotamia
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
Tradition sends Saint Jude east after Pentecost, preaching in Judea, Samaria, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and, in the Armenian church's own account, founding the first Christian community in Armenia together with the apostle Bartholomew, which is why Armenians still call their faith "the Apostolic Church" after the two of them.
The Epistle of Jude
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
A short letter in the New Testament carries Saint Jude's name: one chapter, twenty-five verses, written against teachers who were twisting the community's freedom into license. It is best known for a single startling move, since it quotes the Book of Enoch, a text outside the Jewish and Christian scriptural canon, as though its prophecy could simply be assumed true.
Two Accounts of a Martyrdom
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
The traditions disagree about where Saint Jude died. The Armenian church places his martyrdom in Armenia under King Sanatruk, alongside Bartholomew; the Roman tradition has him killed in Syria alongside the apostle Simon the Zealot, which is why the two are commemorated on the same day and are shown together in Western art, Jude usually holding the club or halberd of his death.
Under the Altar of St. Joseph
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
Saint Jude's relics were brought to Rome and rest today in St. Peter's Basilica, under the altar of St. Joseph in the left transept, sharing the tomb, as he shared the day and the legend, with Simon the Zealot.
A Devotion Two Centuries Old
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
Public devotion to Saint Jude as patron of desperate cases is comparatively recent, tracked to France and Germany in the late eighteenth century and taking firm hold in the United States only in the twentieth, through the Claretian shrine built to him in Chicago in 1929, a devotion that grew fastest during the Depression, among people who had good reason to know what a hopeless case felt like.
Publishing the Favor
The Novena Prayer
Most holy Apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me, that he bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings — particularly (mention your request here) — and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
The custom of printing a small notice of thanks once a favor is granted from Saint Jude, the lines that used to fill the back pages of newspapers, "thank you St. Jude," has no fixed origin, but it is old enough and widespread enough to have become part of the devotion itself: a public record that the patron of lost causes is, in fact, petitioned successfully, and often.
The prayer that opens each day is the standard novena prayer to Saint Jude — long in public circulation, of unknown authorship, and given here as it is commonly printed. Custom also attaches to it a promise to publish the favour received and a set of closing acclamations (May the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored and loved in all the tabernacles until the end of time…); they are not reproduced here, only the novena prayer itself. What follows each day is a fact about Saint Jude, his mission, or the devotion's own history, one per day, drawn from the Gospels, tradition, and the history of the devotion.
