This Monday we celebrate the Feast Day of St Simon and St Jude. These are two apostles that we know very little about apart from their names being among those listed in the New Testament. What information we do have of their work and subsequent martyrdom is from tradition, which tells us that they were martyred together in Persia.

Simon was a Zealot, so part of a national resistance movement involved with the Jewish revolt against the Romans. It is possible that it was his zeal for God’s righteousness that led him to join the apostles as a response to Jesus call to proclaim the kingdom of God. It is Jude who in John’s Gospel account of the Last Supper asks Jesus why he is to reveal to himself to them and not the world, that leads Jesus to comment on the coming of the Spirit.

This week on Monday we also celebrate Labour Day. It is the commemoration of workers efforts to standardize the eight-hour working day. Although the 8-hour working day is not set in legislation, it is implicit in the Minimum Wage Act 1983, which sets out a maximum 40-hour, five-day work week as the norm for employment agreements.

Achieving 'work-life balance' is still often an elusive goal. But one day a year is enshrined in New Zealand law as a time to relax and to reflect on the efforts made by trade unions to get this balance.

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