The Holy Apostle Jude, Brother of the Lord.
Poyleleos Feast. Apostle’s Fast. Abstention from meat and foods that contain these ingredients.
Jude 1:1-10; John 14:21-24.
Read Jude 1:1-10
Jude reminds us of a truth that modern man finds unbearable, chiefly because modern man prefers to be tolerated rather than told the truth: God is no respecter of persons. His judgment falls with a full impartiality, descending from the loftiest heights of angelic intelligence to the darkest depths of human corruption. The angels fell through pride. Sodom and Gomorrah fell through a lust so disordered that it sought to rewrite the basic iconography of creation. Between these extremes stands you and me, proving daily that sin requires neither superior intellect nor inferior circumstances. It requires only the audacity to look at God and say, “I will not serve.”
There is, indeed, a strangely democratic equality in damnation. The highest angel in his ruin and the lowest sinner in his rebellion share this in common: they reject the authority of God in order to crown themselves. We moderns flatter ourselves that we are more enlightened than our forefathers, but Jude shatters that. We are merely doing the old things in new suits. We defile our nature by the same ancient methods: some by the cold pride of the intellect, others by the hot lust of the flesh, but all by waging war against the beautiful order God has woven into creation.
More absurd still, man rebels against God and then grows indignant with anyone who reminds him of God. The sinner often hates goodness because goodness stands before him as a type of accusation.
Yet this is the apostolic spirit: urgent, sober, and hopeful. The Apostles did not preach self-esteem but salvation and repentance. Their cry was simple: the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is at hand. Repent, believe, and be saved. For you cannot have the thrill of mercy without the peril of judgment, and if judgment is real, then mercy becomes the most astonishing thing in the world.