For most apostles’ feast days, one of the two readings will often be about them. For Simon and Jude, the gospel is about them only technically. The names of those Jesus called as apostles is given, and in the list is “Simon who was called a zealot, and Judas the son of James” (Lk. 6:14-15). Yet as lackluster as this may seem, this is the joy Paul describes in the first reading, because now they are “fellow citizens with the holy ones” (Eph. 2:19). Whatever else they are, they are among the apostles.
In a sense, Simon and Jude are the same kind of apostle as most of us. We are certainly called by God, and we are sent out like they were, yet most of us will not warrant our own feast day. Nor do we need to. Our success or failure in life is ultimately about glorifying Christ, not ourselves. There are great saints like Romero or John Paul II, Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day, who proclaim Christ in a way that makes the whole world notice. And then there are saints like Simon and Jude, or any of us, called to be fellow citizens with these saints as we all together glorify Christ.