Prayer to Saint Jude, patron of hopeless causes
The prayer
Saint Jude, apostle whose name almost nobody used, you who asked Jesus why he would show himself to you and not to the world, ask God for me.
I have reached the point where people say there is nothing more to be done. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are not. All I know is that I am still here, asking.
Let me not confuse hope with stubbornness, or giving up with good sense. Let me do today the small part that is still mine and hand to God the part that was never mine to carry.
If the way out comes from somewhere I am not watching, let me recognise it. If it takes long, let me not go hard while I wait.
Amen.
In short
This is a prayer to Saint Jude written for this site and signed by the person who wrote it. Jude Thaddaeus is one of the twelve apostles, distinct from Judas Iscariot, and devotion invokes him in causes that look lost. His feast is 28 October.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 6 min read
When to pray it
When the matter has already been written off — by other people, or by you. It is the prayer of last resort, and it promises no outcome: it asks for clarity to keep going without fooling yourself.
The prayer above refuses two opposite temptations, and that refusal is its subject. The first is promising it will work out — no prayer can promise that, and one that does leaves the person praying worse off when it does not. The second is resignation dressed as faith, the kind that tells you to accept before it is time. What is asked for is the clarity to know which of the two mistakes you are about to make.
The text is ours and it is signed. The prayers to Saint Jude circulating in English are usually modern novena compositions with no declared author, often publisher-owned, and publishing one here would mean reproducing somebody’s text. The devotion, by contrast, is old and public, and that is what the section above is about.
Catholic devotion asks the apostle to intercede: God answers, and what is asked of Jude is that he ask alongside. Most Protestant and evangelical churches do not hold that practice and pray directly to God. This page does not arbitrate the difference; it sets out what the devotion claims and leaves the reading to whoever prays.
There is a good side effect to the confusion of names worth noticing. Because of it, the New Testament preserves an apostle with almost no legend: barely any biography, barely any miracle attributed in life, barely any disputed relic. What is left is one question asked at a supper and one short letter. For someone praying in a hard situation, that may be better company than a heroic biography.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared A first-century apostle; this text was written for Faith Flame in 2026
Jude Thaddaeus is one of the twelve, and he barely appears. Luke calls him Jude of James in the list of apostles; Matthew and Mark call him Thaddaeus. He speaks exactly once in all four Gospels, and it is a good question: why would Jesus show himself to the disciples and not to the world. Tradition attributes to him the short letter that bears the name of Jude, and a martyrdom, probably in Persia.
The traditional explanation for his patronage of hopeless causes is embarrassingly simple: for centuries almost nobody prayed to him, because the name was too close to Judas Iscariot, who handed Jesus over. He was available. The devotion that later grew up inverted the logic of that neglect — the saint nobody asked became the saint you ask when there is nobody left to ask.
The novena texts circulating in English under his name are largely modern compositions with no declared author, reproduced on cards, in newspapers and in chain messages. So this page publishes a prayer of our own, signed, and uses this space for what can be checked.
Little-known details
His only line in the New Testament is a question
A children’s hospital in Memphis came out of a promise to him
The thank-you notices in newspaper classifieds are part of the devotion
He is the official patron of the Chicago Police Department
What the passages say
12And it happened that, in those days, he went out to a mountain to pray. And he was in the prayer of God throughout the night.
13And when daylight had arrived, he called his disciples. And he chose twelve out of them (whom he also named Apostles):
14Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew,
15Matthew and Thomas, James of Alphaeus, and Simon who is called the Zealot,
16and Jude of James, and Judas Iscariot, who was a traitor.
The list of the twelve, and the only place to see the problem up close: two men called Judas in a row, one identified as “of James” and the other as the one who became a traitor. The need to distinguish them is already in the text itself, centuries before it became a matter of devotion.
22Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him: “Lord, how does it happen that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?”
23Jesus responded and said to him: “If anyone loves me, he shall keep my word. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our dwelling place with him.
His only line in the Gospels, with the evangelist interrupting the sentence to note that this is not the Iscariot. The question is a good one and is still asked: why is God’s self-disclosure not public and obvious to everyone. Jesus’ answer does not explain the method — it describes a condition.
20But you, most beloved, are building yourselves up by your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
21keeping yourselves in the love of God, and anticipating the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
From the letter attributed to him, the passage closest to the subject of this page: build yourselves up, keep yourselves, wait. Note that the dominant verb is one of staying rather than of achieving — which suits the position of someone praying about something that will not resolve.
27He said to them, “Things that are impossible with men are possible with God.”
The sentence devotion to hopeless causes quotes most. The context matters: Jesus says it about the difficulty of a rich man entering the Kingdom, not about practical problems. Applying it to a debt or an illness is a legitimate devotional extension, but it is worth knowing that it is an extension.