Jesus .. spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles. Ours in an apostolic faith, that is, a faith which we inherited from the apostles. The only way we know about Jesus and his essential mission to save the world is due to the apostles. It is startling, therefore, that we know so little about them. We are not even sure of their names! Today’s saints, Simon and Jude, for example are almost complete ciphers. Simon is called in some lists “the Zealot” and in other lists “the Canaanite.” Was the early church trying to cover up the fact that one of the twelve was an anti-Roman revolutionary? And Jude on some of the lists is named Judas but apparently to avoid a connection with the betrayer is known in English as Jude. However, on other lists the eleventh apostle is called Thaddeus. Was this another example of trying to create distance from the Judas, the betrayer? In any case, even the prayer of Jesus did not guarantee ideal candidates for the apostles. That should tell us that even though we are not ideal we are called to be apostles in the providence of our everyday lives.
