The Saints We Don't Know

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with the Reverend Canon Dr Mark Clavier.

Good morning.

Saints Simon and Jude are among the least remembered of the apostles. Simon is called “the Zealot,” and Jude is sometimes confused with Judas Iscariot. The Gospels record almost nothing they said or did. Yet the Church has kept their names for nearly two thousand years. We remember them today on this their feast day.

Christians have always found something consoling in that. Jesus himself seemed unimpressed by status and prominence. He told his followers that the first would be last, and that even a cup of cold water given to a little one wouldn’t go unnoticed (Matthew 10:42). Not by the crowds, and certainly not by the elite, but by God.

We live in a culture that measures significance by attention. Yet most of what holds the world together is done under the radar: the field kept, the neighbour visited, the child taught, the grave tended, year after year, with no audience at all. Such fidelity rarely makes a name for itself, but it does make a place worth living in.

Perhaps the lesson Simon and Jude offer isn’t whether we’ll become famous or even long remembered. Perhaps what matters most is whether we’ve been faithful to the people and place we’ve been given, and to those yet unborn who will, like us, benefit from people whose names they never knew.

Let us pray.
God of the hidden and the overlooked, who knows each of us by name, free us from the need to be noticed. Teach us to give our attention to what is near, and to do good faithfully, even when no one sees; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.