Something seemingly impossible occurred within my personal orbit in recent days.
The church building we call our parish home was packed to the gills with worshipers on a Tuesday evening: An overflow crowd, all present for a weekday Mass.
There was a time, 35 years or so ago, when it wasn’t unusual for St. Joe’s to welcome such a teeming congregation for Sunday liturgies. But a weekday Mass? Never before, in my experience.
This weekday Mass turned out to be the hottest ticket in town…
So what was the occasion? People had come from far and wide to see (and venerate) what’s known in Catholic circles as “a first-class relic” – the forearm bones of a saint. And not just any saint, but one of the Twelve Apostles – Jude Thaddeus – dubbed in recent centuries the “Apostle of the Impossible.”
The carved-wood reliquary, holding the forearm bones of a saint.
The one-day stop at St. Joe’s was part of a months-long touring exhibition, slated to bring this relic to 100 cities across the US, Canada and Mexico. In the weeks leading up to our local event, I’d heard that it would “draw thousands.” Frankly, I was more than a little skeptical of that claim. But the Apostle proved me wrong.
Indeed: hours before the Mass, my Sweetie and I stood in line for well over 90 minutes just for the chance to snap a few photos and spend a precious 10 seconds with the relic. In all, they say, more than 4,200 people did the same that day.
The long lines lasted from early afternoon until after 10 PM, pausing only for Mass in the evening.
Amazing. Impossible, even.
Not to mention, a tad confusing and confounding: A first-class relic easily outdraws the Lord of the Cosmos, present in the Eucharist on any other day at St. Joe’s. In fact, Jesus was there at my moment of veneration…quietly and humbly blessing this whole holy scene from His repose in the tabernacle, just a few paces behind the relic itself.
Part of me wanted to be miffed by it all. Jesus deserves better than this, I thought. He deserves a more prominent place in our hearts. But then something moved in me when we were encouraged (during the homily at Mass) to meditate on the person of St. Jude Thaddeus: son of Mary of Clopas, cousin of Jesus…who (unlike his mother), didn’t manage to accompany Jesus to the cross. Jude, like most of the Apostles, abandoned Jesus in His time of need.
That likely was Jude’s worst day, our homilist said, in his entire relationship with the Lord of the Cosmos. But it was followed by better days when Jude later chose to accept Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Impossible, even – that Jesus could be so eager to look past Jude’s weakness and brokenness. Not to mention, my own sinfulness…and the faults of every single person who stood in a long line with me, to see St. Jude’s bones on a sunny Tuesday afternoon.
St. Jude knows better than most the full depth of the mercy that our Eucharistic Lord Jesus makes present to us sinners.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 