Msgr. Roger J. Landry

Church of St. Mary and Our Lady of Grace, St. Petersburg, Florida

Staff Enrichment Day for TPMS-USA

Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, Apostles

October 28, 2025

Eph 2:19-22, Ps 19, Lk 6:12-16

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• St. Paul in today’s first reading tells the Ephesians and us that our Christian existence is “built upon the foundation of the Apostles.” Today’s providential feast of the apostles SS. Simon and Jude during our staff enrichment day gives us a chance to ponder our continuation of the mission Jesus entrusted to them and grounding that mission more firmly on the foundation of what the Lord did and continues to do through these two apostles. I’d like to frame our life and mission within the context of what the Lord did in their life. We can ponder five different aspects.


• The first thing we can examine is the theme of our calling. The apostles’ vocation, we see, was born from Christ’s prayer. Jesus had pulled an all-nighter praying to his Father about whom he should choose and praying for those he would choose. His prayer was not just a single invocation, but a persevering intercession. This prayer for those whom he would call continued throughout his public life and we can presume even after his Ascension. During the ordination rite of the Last Supper we see how fervently Jesus prayed to the Father. “I pray for them,” he said aloud, “I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me because they are yours. … Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. … I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. … Consecrate them in the truth. …  I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” And then he prayed for the apostles’ work to be fruitful, for all “those who will believe in me through their word,” and prayed for their salvation, “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, … that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jesus’ ongoing prayer would take on a very specific form, as we would see in Jesus’ Holy Thursday dialogue with St. Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your [singular] own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” It’s important regularly for us to take the time to recall with gratitude and wonder that our Christian vocation, likewise, has its beginning in Jesus’ prayer. Just as much as Jesus prayed all night and then called Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Jude, and Judas Iscariot,” so he has prayed and called each of us. He has prayed for each of us, to keep us in the Father’s name, to unite us to God and to each other, to consecrate us in the truth of God’s word, in the truth of Jesus’ own consecration to the Father. Jesus has prayed for us that our faith may not fail and that we will strengthen the faith of each other and those we serve. Jesus continues to pray for us. He’s praying for us at this Mass. He’s praying for us when we have difficulties in our missionary work. His persevering prayer for us is an example for us to persevere in prayer together with him during it as well.


• The second theme is our discipleship. When Jesus came down the mountain, St. Luke tells us, he chose the twelve from among the “disciples,” from among those who were already as the Greek word disciple means Jesus’ “students,” who were zealously following him, who were living by faith, who were hearing his words and seeking to put them into practice. Together with Jesus’ prayer, their faith was the crucial job qualification. Jesus didn’t raid the rabbinical schools for the greatest young Scriptural scholars of the day who could more easily preach and teach. He didn’t turn to the ascetical Pharisees whose whole life was dedicated to trying to live the Mosaic law to its perfection, to those who were already praying, tithing, fasting far more than was explicitly required. He turned to common, ordinary folk. He raided wharves and tax offices, he found people under fig trees and those who were lousy private investigators tailing him to discover where he lived. For the most part, that’s always been Jesus’ way. St. Paul would say to the Corinthians, “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The saints were celebrate today are, in many ways, the least of the apostles. St. Luke put them at the very end of the list, named just before the notorious traitor Judas Iscariot. In some ways, they’re still the least. The tomb of any apostle — not to mention two apostles — would ordinarily be expected to be noteworthy, but both of their remains, brought to Rome by Crusaders lest their tombs be destroyed by Muslims, rest quietly together in the southern transept of St. Peter’s Basilica, at the altar of St. Joseph, underneath the Blessed Sacrament. Whereas St. Peter has a 70-ton bronze baldachin sculpted by Bernini and a massive dome-shamed tiara designed by Michelangelo over his relics just a few hundred feet away, SS. Simon’s and Jude’s tomb remains such that most visitors to St. Peter’s have no idea where it is. But there’s a beauty here, all the same, because as disciples called by Jesus, it was never truly about them, but about him, who remains on top of them in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus called them because of their faith, because they knew how much they needed him and needed to learn from him. The criterion of discipleship even overcame human differences. Simon is labeled a “zealot,” from the Hebrew verb qana, which means that he was from among those most opposed to the Romans and the one whose first reaction, for example, to the calling of the tax collector Matthew, should have been fisticuffs. But as Pope Benedict said back in 2006, in Jesus’ calling the first apostles, “It was people who interested him, not social classes and labels.” He added, “This is clearly a lesson for us who are often inclined to accentuate differences and even contrasts, forgetting that in Jesus Christ we are given the strength to get the better of our continual conflicts.” It’s key for us routinely to examine the state of our discipleship, to sit at Jesus the Master’s feet as zealous students and let him form us like he formed the Twelve. Many of the issues that plague the Christian life and apostolate begin when we forget that we’re called, like every one of the baptized, to holiness, to be a faithful follower, to keep all the commandments out of love for God and others, to hang on Jesus’ words, to become true Good Samaritans, to practice what the Lord has sent us to preach. Many of the issues also begin when we fail to relate to each other as fellow disciples, strengthening each other’s faith by the fire of our own, rejoicing at the other’s spiritual gifts given for the building up of the Church, and helping each other stay on the narrow way when we notice that a brother or sister is beginning to drift or is lost. Just like Jesus called the 12 not to be 12 independent students but to form a college, so he’s called each of us, at this time, in this place, to form community of one heart and mind, to be with him and with each other, conscious of the fact that we need each other just as much as our bodies need eyes, hands and feet.


• The third thing we learn from today’s feast is about mission. After choosing the 12, Jesus named them “apostles,” literally “those sent.” They were to become his ambassadors, his envoys, in spreading his kingdom, in heralding the Good News. In the Psalm today, we prayed, “Their message goes out through all the earth,” and we know that through 11 of these 12 men, Christ’s message did radiate throughout the ancient world. They couldn’t keep the message in. They were impelled to share Jesus, and his words, and the joy of the Christian life with others. They would walk for months to far off territories. We continue their work. Imagine what the apostles could have done with the resources we have at our disposal, not just our education, but our computers, phones, AI, not to mention our car and especially planes. Today’s feast is a chance for us to be renewed, as missionaries supporting missionaries across the globe,  in the apostolic zeal with which SS. Simon and Jude crisscrossed the world.


• The fourth thing to ponder today is the fact that they were martyrs. They were effective in proclaiming the faith because they were willing to die for it, they were willing to proclaim it even when it made others uncomfortable to the point of homicidal rage. They were willing to follow Jesus along the path of the grain of wheat. They were willing to lose their lives so as to save it. They were prepared to pick up their Cross each day and be crucified upon it. They