Homily for Feast of Sts. Simon and Jude

Homily for the Feast of
Sts. Simon and Jude

October 28, 2025
Eph 2: 19-22
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

The March of Abraham
(Jozsef Molnar)

“You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God” (Eph 2: 19).

In Eph 2, Paul has been speaking to Gentile believers about their belonging to Christ just as much as Jewish believers.  “You who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ” (2:13).  Bound together by Christ—like the capstone binding a building—all are members of God’s house.

We may also see in this passage an allusion to our ancestors in faith, the patriarchs.  They were nomadic herders, living in tents in a land not their own.  They were strangers and sojourners, not citizens of any towns in Canaan, not worshipers of any of the local gods.  That was true during all the Hebrews’ wandering in the Sinai wilderness, too, until God led them into a homeland where they settled.

Those who belong to Christ, based on the apostolic preaching, have settled into a permanent, fixed home.  They don’t have to journey to God’s house in Jerusalem.  Instead, they worship the one God as part of a dwelling place raised by the Spirit of God within themselves (2:22).

The collect notes that “the blessed apostles have brought us to acknowledge” God’s holy name.  We adhere to the Gospel received from Jesus thru his apostles.  We are citizens of heaven with the apostles and all the saints, even now while we’re sojourning in an alien world, journeying toward our true homeland.  Strangers and sojourners, we strive now to belong more fully to Christ and to grow into the “temple sacred in the Lord” (2:21).  We rely for that growth on the intercession of Simon and Jude, all the apostles, all God’s holy ones.

Sts. Simon & Jude Thaddeus
(Ugolino di Nerio)