Hidden Foundations - Weekday Homily Video

Let me be honest with you: while preparing this homily I had to look up for more details about Simon and Jude the apostles. Not because I'm a terrible Catholic, okay, maybe partly that, but because these two apostles are essentially footnotes in the Gospel story. Simon gets just one description: "the Zealot."

Jude gets confused with Judas Iscariot so often that he has basically spent two thousand years saying, "No, not that Judas. The other one." Yet here we are, celebrating their feast day. Not of the famous ones. Not just Peter and John. But Simon the political radical and Jude the perpetually mistaken. 

Choosing Carefully 

Jesus spends a whole night in prayer before choosing the Twelve. Luke emphasizes this, a whole night. And when morning comes, he doesn't choose the obvious candidates. He doesn't assemble a dream team of the most talented, most educated, most charismatic leaders in Galilee. He chooses fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, and a collection of people so unremarkable that two thousand years later we struggle to remember their names. 

Think about Simon for a moment. The Zealots were Jewish revolutionaries who believed in armed resistance against Rome. They were the radicals, the ones who thought peaceful coexistence was betrayal. Simon probably carried a knife. He probably had friends in militant circles. And Jesus looks at this man, this man who believes violence is the answer, and says, "You. You're going to help me build a kingdom of peace." 

Or consider Jude. He was known as “the good listener,” the one people confided in when things were dark and confusing. Tradition tells us he preached in Mesopotamia and Persia. He went to places where nobody knew his name, where he had no reputation to lean on, where he was just another traveling preacher. And he became the patron saint of lost or desperate causes. The saint you pray to when everything else has failed. How fitting. The forgotten apostle becomes the saint for forgotten situations. 

Unseen Foundations

Paul writes that we're "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone." But here's what we miss: foundations are underground. Nobody sees them. Nobody admires them. Nobody takes pictures of them. They're just there, buried, holding everything up. The most important part of any building is the part nobody notices. 

I think of reading about a woman named Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose calculations sent astronauts to the moon. For decades, nobody knew her name. She was African American, working in a segregated workspace, doing mathematics that most people couldn't comprehend. She was foundational. Essential. Invisible. It wasn't until 2015, when she was ninety-seven years old, that she finally received public recognition for work she had done fifty years earlier. 

Unsung Heroes

Simon and Jude were foundation stones. They held things up while others got the credit. They preached in obscure places while Peter got to preach in Rome, the center of the world. They died martyrs' deaths that barely made it into historical record while Paul's letters became Scripture. 

And Jesus spent all night in prayer to choose them. All night. That should tell us something about how God sees value. God doesn't need our reputation. God doesn't need our impressive credentials or our public recognition. God needs our willingness to be buried underground, holding things up, forgotten by everyone except the One who matters. 

Working in Secret for the Kingdom

So maybe today isn't about celebrating two obscure apostles. Maybe it's about celebrating obscurity itself. About recognizing that most of God's work happens through people whose names we'll never know, whose contributions we'll never see, whose faithfulness is witnessed only by heaven. 

You're probably a Simon, sharp-edged, passionate, intense, or a Jude, smooth and quiet. Most of us are. We're not Peter. We're not Paul. We're doing faithful work that nobody notices, holding up structures we'll never get credit for building. And Jesus spent all night in prayer to choose people exactly like us. That's not a consolation. That's a revolution beginning with you. So go and be a foundation, steady, faithful, and unseen if needed.

• Today’s Readings
  
  
• Father Boby's inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center this morning. You can view the Mass (and the Rosary at the 30-minute mark) on the Family Rosary YouTube page.
  
  
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