Catholic Mass Readings and Reflection October 28, 2026

1. Before He chooses anyone, Jesus goes up a mountain and prays all night to God. Only when day comes does He call His disciples and choose twelve of them. The choosing comes out of a whole night spent with the Father.

2. Then Luke gives the list. Simon whom He named Peter, and Andrew. James and John. Philip and Bartholomew. The names we know well come first. Near the end, almost hidden, are Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.

3. These are today’s saints. Simon the Zealot, perhaps a man once fierce about the politics of his people. Jude, also called Thaddeus, who asks Jesus one question at the Last Supper and then disappears from the Gospel story. Tradition says both preached far away and died as martyrs. Beyond that, we hardly know them.

4. And the very last name on the list is Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. Jesus prayed all night and still chose a man who would betray Him. That is worth sitting with. His choices are not mistakes, but they are also not a promise that everyone chosen will be faithful.

5. Paul says the household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. Foundations are the part of a building no one admires. They are buried. Simon and Jude are buried stones, almost unseen, and the whole house rests on them.

6. Most of us will be names near the end of the list. No one will write our stories. Our faithfulness will be known to a few people, and then to God alone. Today’s feast says that is enough. A hidden stone fitted to the cornerstone still holds up the house.

7. Jude is invoked in Catholic devotion as the patron of desperate causes. It fits him somehow, this nearly forgotten apostle, that people turn to him when they feel forgotten too. The obscure saint understands the obscure prayer.