A plastic St. Judas Tadeo, keeping watch over some sweet breads
I had passed his church many times on the way back and forth from my music school. It sticks out like a sore, 17th-century thumb in the middle of busy Paseo de la Reforma, a lonely outlier on the border of the historic downtown. Dilapidated, sagging, its Baroque facade caked with soot, the place seems like something of a lost cause itself. Taco vendors surround it, along with countless stands where you can buy St. Judas Tadeo candles, bracelets, and T-shirts.
I walked inside, clutching my new candle guaranteed to burn for at least 30 hours. When choosing between candles at the bus stop, I was given many options of varying prices, depending on just how lost my cause was. I passed a man at the door wearing a physician's white coat, peddling what appeared to be herbal remedies dispensed from amber-colored glass vials, which he concocted by referring to an inky, ancient-looking manuscript.
Inside, the church was far simpler by comparison to others I've seen, but bright with sunlight and the traffic of midday mass. I joined a throng of people standing before the altar, listening to a charismatic bald priest wrap up his message, followed by the announcements. "Today we're selling a compilation CD of San Judas Tadeo devotionals," he said, "for the low-low price of 100 pesos."
Looking around, it didn't take me long to realize that my own lost cause paled in comparison to those of my neighbors. Blind women with canes grasped their St. J. T. cards above their heads, murmuring prayers. An elderly man scooted past me on his knees, determined to humbly traverse the length of the church in this popular Mexican fashion. A devoted daughter helped her handicapped mother find a seat in a pew, her arms dripping with St. Judas Tadeo merchandise.
Ok, so I can easily see where opponents of the Catholic church get their ideas about saints and statues and idol worship. I also seem to recall a passage in the Bible (Matthew 21, thank you Google) when Jesus flipped out upon realizing that people had set up merch tables in the temple. But even if you could cut through the enterprise with a knife today at San Hipolito Church, it would take a chainsaw to break through the atmosphere of unshakeable hope and meditation, which struck me as all the more remarkable considering the number of distractions both inside and out. It seemed to hover over the churchgoers as they advanced, en masse, to light candles at St. Judas Tadeo's feet.
I found myself swept up among them and planted in a kneeler before I knew it. I was staring up at St. J. T.'s nose, my candle already burning. I looked to the people around me for cues on what to do. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts and murmurings, with the occasional interruption to take a cell phone call. An altar boy was listening to his iPod. Traffic buzzed outside. In a city of 23 million, I figured Saint Judas had heard just about everything, so I introduced myself and started talking.
