Short History on the Life of Saint Jude

Short History on the Life of Saint Jude

The tradition of devotion to St. Jude goes beyond a simple Bible story; in fact, it is a reflection of the ability of ordinary people to call upon their powerful faith to triumph over seemingly impossible odds in their daily lives.

Legend has it that St. Jude was born into a Jewish family in  Paneas, a town in the Galilee portion of ancient Palestine, the same region that Jesus grew up in. He probably spoke Greek and Aramaic, like many of his contemporaries in that area, and he was a farmer (as many of his family were) by trade. 

Jude was described by St. Matthew (13:55) as being one of the "brethren" of Jesus, probably meaning a cousin since the Hebrew word for "brethren" indicates a blood relationship. His mother, Mary, was referred to as a cousin of Jesus' mother Mary, while his father, Cleophas, was the brother of St. Joseph. 

Jude had several brothers, including St. James, who was another of the original Apostles. His own first name, "Jude", means giver of joy, while "Thaddeus",  another name he was called, means generous and kind.

He was later married, had at least one child, and there are references to his grandchildren living as late as 95 A.D.

Jude was then called to be one of Jesus 12 Apostles, and began preaching the Good News of Jesus to Jews throughout Galilee, Samaria, and Judea.

St. Jude went to Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 37 A.D., and became a leader of the Church of The East that St. Thomas established there.  For a fascinating account of St. Jude's influence in that region, read my article The St. Jude- Iraq Connection.

St. Jude was a true internationalist, traveling throughout Mesopotamia, Libya, Turkey, and Persia with St. Simon, preaching and converting many people to Christianity.  He was credited with helping the early creation of the Armenian church, and other places beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.

Around the year 60 A.D., St. Jude wrote a Gospel letter to recent Christian converts in Eastern churches who were under persecution.  In it, he warned them against the pseudo-teachers of the day who were spreading false ideas about the early Christian faith.   He encouraged them to persevere in the face of the harsh, difficult circumstances they were in, just as their forefathers had done before them. He exhorted them to keep their faith and to stay in the love of God as they had been taught. His inspirational support of these early believers led to him becoming the patron saint of desperate cases.

He is believed to have been martyred in Persia or Syria around 65 A.D. The axe or club that he is often shown holding in pictures symbolizes the way in which he was killed. Truly, he paid the ultimate price for his faith.  After his death his body was brought back to Rome and was placed in a crypt beneath St. Peter's Basilica, which people visit to this day

St. Jude is traditionally depicted carrying the image of Jesus in his hand or close to his chest. This idea comes from a Biblical story in which King Abgar of Edessa (a city located in what is now southeast Turkey) asked Jesus to cure him of leprosy and sent an artist to bring him a drawing of Jesus. Impressed with Abgar's great faith, Jesus pressed his face into a cloth and gave it to St. Jude to take to Abgar. Upon seeing Jesus' image, The King was cured and he converted to Christianity along with most of the people under his rule. This cloth is believed to be the famous Shroud of Jesus which is currently on display in Turin, Italy.

St. Jude is often shown in paintings with a flame around his head.  This represents his presence at Pentecost, when he received the Holy Spirit with the other apostles.

In the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (France) was a renowned devotee of St. Jude, as was St. Bridget of Sweden who, in a vision, was encouraged by Jesus to turn to St. Jude with faith and confidence. He told her that, in accordance with Jude's surname, Thaddeus (which means generous, courageous, and kind), "he will show himself to be the most willing to give you help."

Devotion to St. Jude began again in earnest in the 1800's, starting in Italy and Spain, spreading to South America, and finally to the U.S. (originally in the Chicago area) in the 1920's.  Novena prayers to St. Jude helped people, especially newly-arrived immigrants from Europe, deal with the pressures caused by the Great Depression, Second World War, and the changing workplace and family life.

Why has devotion to St. Jude continued to grow to the present day?

In spite of (or possibly because of) all the advances human society has made, human beings find themselves under incredible stress and have difficulty coping at one time or another.  Increasingly, people are finding that technology and other man-made innovations are unable to provide comfort and hope when it is truly needed, so millions of people around the world turn to St. Jude when they feel the most helpless and alone. St. Jude has proven to be a true friend and a beacon of hope to those who call on him--always willing to help and seek help no matter how desperate the need. And in today's tumultuous times, we need him more than ever.  We celebrate his feast day on October 28.

NOTE: We have recently added a collection a beautiful images of St. Jude.  You can view them in our Resource Center or by clicking here.  St. Jude prints and statues are also available in our Gift Shop.

All contents of this website are copyright © 2005 St. Jude Novena Site.

THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

The social function of language

When distinguishing earlier between langue and parole we saw that language can be studied as a stable structural system or in terms of its relation to social features. Subsequently we have been preoccupied with aspects of the system of language. In this chapter we shall examine more closely the importance of being aware of the varied social functions of language in determining the content of language learning. We can do this in three ways: first, by looking at the indi-vidual in the speech community and asking for what social purposes he uses language and how social norms influence his choice of lingu-istic forms, secondly, by looking at how the individual chooses langu-age to express his intention and achieve effects; thirdly, by looking at societies in which more than one language is used to see how the varied relationships between languages, as well as the status of each one, channels decisions about the objectives and methods of language teaching.

Social norms 
Few of us are aware of the range and variety of our uses of language during even one typical day. Language will occur almost wherever we come into contact with other people and will be different accord¬ing to the nature of the contact. Language also assails us even in situations in which no other people are present or when other people are present but are not producing language for our consumption. Even people whose jobs may not appear to demand extensive use of language are placed in numerous situations which will require characteristic pieces of language. The linguist can study the relations between language forms and social context to understand how the individual's choice of language enables him to perform his social functions. Let us look at some of the important social influences on language use.

Dialect
The first set of influences produce dialect features. These are theproduct of the individual's geographical and class origin. Educational xperience is also significant, but this is partly dependent on class anyway. If two speakers differ in grammar pronunciation and vocabulary,
we will conclude that they speak different dialects. Variation in pronunciation, but not in grammar and vocabulary, would be considered difference of accent. There is no clear quantitative linguistic measure to indicate where difference of dialect becomes difference of language. The issue is political and social, not linguistic.Everybody speaks a dialect, which is not seen, as it is traditionally, as some kind of deviation from the norm of standard English. Nor would a linguist feel that there was any linguistic justification for saying that one dialect or accent is better than another. It is a socialjudgment that leads people to say that one English dialect is the correct one. 
Dialect is not an important type of language variation for teaching. Although the potential teacher and the advanced learner might be made sensitive to the fact that there is dialect variation in the target language just as there is in their mother-tongue, we rightly settle for the teaching of a single dialect to most learners. All language teaching, however, at least implies an assumption about the best dialect to teach.
If asked to justify the teaching of the metropolitan standard that is normally adopted as the model for foreign language teaching, we would presumably say that it is the form of language most acceptable to the native speaker and therefore the form that will enable the non-native speaker to be accepted by the host community. This seems a powerful justification. But, if this is valid, it cannot also be valid to teach the standard form to learners whose contact is likely to be speakers of a non-standard variety. Should not Americans learn Mexican rather than Castilian Spanish and Canadian rather than metropolitan French? Should not French-speaking Swiss learn a Swiss variety of German? Can we expect that before long Indonesians will be learning Australian rather than British English? If these varieties were to be accepted as the target languages it would be because they were the forms of the language with which the learners were most likely to be in contact. A different situation arises when the language being learned will be used where there is no native speaker present. It is being acquired not primarily to different synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms that a word has may well be the only way that the full meaningfulness of a word can be brought out. Extensive reading in a Foreign language without directed study of vocabulary may often foil to reveal to the learner all that he could learn about the vocabulary. No doubt even close word study of the sort that I am suggesting will not necessarily turn into an active command of words and their semantic features. However, it is to be expected that lexical items will only slowly become meaningful to a learner in the same way that they are meaningful to a native speaker. Just as one can have text-based study for the acquisition of syntax, so one can make use of texts to show the whole
network of relations that a word may have. The justification is not that the pupil will retain all the details of the network, merely that he will take in enough for the word to have become slightly more meaningful than it was before.
Probably the clearest conclusion that can be drawn from the study of meaning is that given the complexity of relations involved, the acquisition of meaning is neither a simple process nor one that is ever complete. It is naive to believe that any pupil at an early stage of language learning 'has learnt' the meaning of a word. So vast is the network of intralinguistic and extralinguistic relations involved that the acquisition of meaning can only be a gradual process of progres-sive discrimination following on the rather crude initial assumptions of equivalence between first and second language lexical items. To achieve this is impossible without massive exposure to the language, and this in turn can probably be achieved only through extensive reading in the foreign language. Through reading the learner is led to recognize the non-equivalence of L1 and L2 items. He is exposed to the lexical items embedded in natural linguistic contexts, and as a result they begin slowly to have the same meaningfulness for him that they have for the native speaker. His exposure to language written by native speakers, especially language written in a variety of styles for a variety of purposes, will also develop his sensitivity to the collocations that native speakers prefer. Without contact on a large scale his judgment of lexical appropriateness will remain unsure and unsound.
There is one important implication to this emphasis on the necessity of extensive exposure through reading. Much discussion of foreign language learning has been bedevilled by the over-simple conviction, first, that a form will not become a part of the pupil's productive repertoire unless he is given ample opportunity to practise it when it first occurs, and secondly, that the only valid aim of foreign language.
teaching is to set up this repertoire. This has led to a very widely accepted methodology in which every item, grammatical or lexical, at its first occurrence in a teaching sequence is made the object of practice material. It is held that a lesson should not contain new items unless the learner is going to be given the opportunity of practising those items. The content of a unit is therefore bound to be restricted to what it is feasible to practise in the time available. If one was to insist on maintaining this approach, extensive reading would scarcely be possible, since many items will be met which are not immediately practised and which do not become part of the learner's active vocabulary.
In fact neither of these points need be seen as a serious drawback. First, learners do sometimes remember and subsequently use an item which they did not repeat at the time they first heard it; and secondly, it is a wholly undesirable restriction on the learner to require that he should be unable to understand any more than he is able to produce. This would put him at a considerable disadvantage in comparison with the native speaker who has a far larger * passive' than 'active' vocabulary. It would be unnatural, therefore, to limit the foreign learner to a purely 'active' vocabulary. It is perfectly proper that we should use texts in which some of the lexical content is intended for comprehension only. It is no argument against extensive reading to say that the learner may misunderstand or even fail to place any meaning at all on some of the lexical items. It is in any case an experience for which he needs to be prepared, since he will meet it as soon as he is exposed to the language outside the teaching situation.

COVER OF OBE PHILO OF HUMAN NATURE

OBE SYLLABUS IN   PHILO OF HUMAN NATURE

VISION

            Saint Jude College is the leading provider of excellent  and responsive education under the tenet of propter humanitatem

MISSION

            Saint Jude College is committed to provide quality programs for global professional resulting in the optimized productivity  through instruction, research, and extension services founded on moral values and pride in one’s race.

INSTITUTIONAL  EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

           

1.     Provide quality education, responsive and relevant to the needs of the global community.

2.     Produce globally competitive professionals.

3.     Instill the Thaddeans spirit o inspiring optimism, patriotism, and service.

4.     Intensify research capabilities of stakeholders; and

5.     Respond to the needs of the community through extension services by improving the quality of life.

Attributes of  SJCDC Graduates

The Saint Jude  Thaddean  Experience turns out well- rounded graduates who have three main attributes: Scholarly Pursuit, Just and Humane regards for people and Commitment to service.

1.1   Scholarly Pursuit

A knowledgeable to the activities that engages in a profession  who can  identify and evaluate problems in the workplace and can erudite,  and formulate solutions to problems.

            1.2. Just and Humane regards for people

            An individual being in  conformity with what is morally  upright and compassionate in dealing with other people.

1.2  Commitment to service.

A graduates who can live in accordance to Thaddean values and able to apply acquired knowledge and skills in the service of others.

OBE SYLLABUS IN  SOCIOLOGY & ANTHRPOLOGY

VISION

            Saint Jude College is the leading provider of excellent  and responsive education under the tenet of propter humanitatem

MISSION

            Saint Jude College is committed to provide quality programs for global professional resulting in the optimized productivity  through instruction, research, and extension services founded on moral values and pride in one’s race.

INSTITUTIONAL  EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

           

1.     Provide quality education, responsive and relevant to the needs of the global community.

2.     Produce globally competitive professionals.

3.     Instill the Thaddeans spirit o inspiring optimism, patriotism, and service.

4.     Intensify research capabilities of stakeholders; and

5.     Respond to the needs of the community through extension services by improving the quality of life.

Attributes of  SJCDC Graduates

The Saint Jude  Thaddean  Experience turns out well- rounded graduates who have three main attributes: Scholarly Pursuit, Just and Humane regards for people and Commitment to service.

1.1   Scholarly Pursuit

A knowledgeable to the activities that engages in a profession  who can  identify and evaluate problems in the workplace and can erudite,  and formulate solutions to problems.

            1.2. Just and Humane regards for people

            An individual being in  conformity with what is morally  upright and compassionate in dealing with other people.

1.2  Commitment to service.

A graduates who can live in accordance to Thaddean values and able to apply acquired knowledge and skills in the service of others.

COVER FOR OBE SYLLABUS FOR THADDEAN 2

OBE SYLLABUS IN  THADDEAN 2

VISION

            Saint Jude College is the leading provider of excellent  and responsive education under the tenet of propter humanitatem

MISSION

            Saint Jude College is committed to provide quality programs for global professional resulting in the optimized productivity  through instruction, research, and extension services founded on moral values and pride in one’s race.

INSTITUTIONAL  EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

           

1.     Provide quality education, responsive and relevant to the needs of the global community.

2.     Produce globally competitive professionals.

3.     Instill the Thaddeans spirit o inspiring optimism, patriotism, and service.

4.     Intensify research capabilities of stakeholders; and

5.     Respond to the needs of the community through extension services by improving the quality of life.

Attributes of  SJCDC Graduates

The Saint Jude  Thaddean  Experience turns out well- rounded graduates who have three main attributes: Scholarly Pursuit, Just and Humane regards for people and Commitment to service.

1.1   Scholarly Pursuit

A knowledgeable to the activities that engages in a profession  who can  identify and evaluate problems in the workplace and can erudite,  and formulate solutions to problems.

            1.2. Just and Humane regards for people

            An individual being in  conformity with what is morally  upright and compassionate in dealing with other people.

1.2  Commitment to service.

A graduates who can live in accordance to Thaddean values and able to apply acquired knowledge and skills in the service of others.

OBE SYLLABUS IN  PE-2

VISION

            Saint Jude College is the leading provider of excellent  and responsive education under the tenet of propter humanitatem

MISSION

            Saint Jude College is committed to provide quality programs for global professional resulting in the optimized productivity  through instruction, research, and extension services founded on moral values and pride in one’s race.

INSTITUTIONAL  EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

           

1.     Provide quality education, responsive and relevant to the needs of the global community.

2.     Produce globally competitive professionals.

3.     Instill the Thaddeans spirit o inspiring optimism, patriotism, and service.

4.     Intensify research capabilities of stakeholders; and

5.     Respond to the needs of the community through extension services by improving the quality of life.

Attributes of  SJCDC Graduates

The Saint Jude  Thaddean  Experience turns out well- rounded graduates who have three main attributes: Scholarly Pursuit, Just and Humane regards for people and Commitment to service.

1.1   Scholarly Pursuit

A knowledgeable to the activities that engages in a profession  who can  identify and evaluate problems in the workplace and can erudite,  and formulate solutions to problems.

            1.2. Just and Humane regards for people

            An individual being in  conformity with what is morally  upright and compassionate in dealing with other people.

1.2  Commitment to service.

A graduates who can live in accordance to Thaddean values and able to apply acquired knowledge and skills in the service of others.

OBE SYLLABUS COVER FOR ALL SUBJECTS

OUTCOME-BASED SYLLABUS in ________________

VISION

Saint Jude College is the leading provider of excellent and responsive education under the tenet of propter humanitatem.

MISSION

Saint Jude College is committed to provide quality programs for global professional resulting in the optimized productivity through instruction, research, and extension services founded on moral values and pride in one’s race.

INSTITUTIONAL EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

1.            Provide quality education, responsive and relevant to the needs of the global community.

2.            Produce globally competitive professionals.

3.            Instill the Thaddeans spirit o inspiring optimism, patriotism, and service.

4.            Intensify research capabilities of stakeholders; and

5.            Respond to the needs of the community through extension services by improving the quality of life.

ATTRIBUTES OF SJCDC GRADUATES

The Saint Jude Thaddean Experience turns out well- rounded graduates who have three main attributes: Scholarly Pursuit, Just and Humane regards for people and Commitment to service.

1.1          Scholarly Pursuit

Knowledgeable to the activities that engages in a profession who can identify and evaluate problems in the workplace and can erudite,  and formulate solutions to problems.

 1.2. Just and Humane regards for people

An individual being in conformity with what is morally  upright and compassionate in dealing with other people.

1.3          Commitment to service.

A graduate who can live in accordance to Thaddean values and able to apply acquired knowledge and skills in the service of other.