St. Jude

Many of us know that St. Jude is the patron saint of impossible causes. Did you ever pray to St. Jude and wonder if it is impossible, why am I praying? Did you ever wonder if nothing is impossible with God, then what causes does St. Jude help with? Sometimes I wonder if we really consider what we are praying for, why we are praying for it, and why we pray to the saint we choose to pray to.

Awhile back my husband and I felt called to a new lifestyle. I won’t bore you with the details, but although it sounded exciting and amazing, we couldn’t help wondering how we would accomplish it. We could do many of the pieces, but the financial part of being able to do it sounded impossible. So, I looked up all kinds of prayers for St. Jude. After all, if he is the patron for impossible causes, he would be the one. But the more I looked for the right prayer for us, the less I felt as though it was the right way to go. I decided (as a writer) that I would write my own prayer to St. Jude. Every time I began, I deleted what I had written because of the questions I began with. And, then I wondered whether God was already going to take care of it since He was leading us to that life change. Maybe we just needed to believe and have faith in God to take care of it. But, although we were doing that, some of it felt pretty overwhelming at times.

Then it hit me! St. Jude is the patron saint of impossible causes and “we” are the impossible causes! God can do and does do amazing things. God is all knowing and all powerful and does more for us than we even can think to ask for. So of course if He is going to ask us to go on a mission of sorts, then He would find a way, or more accurately already knew how it would work out. It was us who needed St. Jude not the situation. So, my prayer stated with what we felt like we needed and asked St. Jude to help us to trust and believe that God would take care of all of it. What God couldn’t, or I should say, wouldn’t do is force us to trust Him. God gives us free will and although He is there to help us at every turn, He won’t make us do anything. St. Jude may just be the patron saint of all of us since so often it is us that get in our own way.

So, I encourage you to look at the things you pray for and ask yourself if you are standing in your own way. Consider a prayer to change, not the situation, but how you attack it, accept it, and move past it. God will help us, but we need to help ourselves.