Betwixt Crucifixion and Resurrection

No matter what day of the week it was, what must this day betwixt the Crucifixion and the Resurrection have been like for those who had followed Jesus through his three-year ministry? We get a sense of what this day must have been like for Peter after having heard that cock crow after his third denial of his teacher and lived with that through the Crucifixion. We get a sense of what it was like for John--the disciple whom Jesus loved?--as he began trying to live up to the mandate from the cross: "Look, here's your mother!" We get a sense that Judas Iscariot was either dead or quickly on the way to being so.

I picture the eleven--minus Judas Iscariot--after the scattering in Gethsemane at least two nights before coming slowly back together somewhere in Jerusalem on this day. They are disillusioned and confused, to say the least, and they find it difficult to speak to or to make eye contact with one another. What talk they're able to muster tends toward trying to figure out just what the heck happened over these last few of days and how much danger they themselves are in by association. I doubt they'd made much headway in this when in the early hours of Sunday morning Mary from Magdala burst into their room with a breathless "I have seen the Lord."

I've begun wondering about one apostle in particular. Thaddaeus, I like to call him. The books of Matthew and Mark call him that. The books of Luke and Acts call him Judas, son of James. The book of John calls him Judas (not Iscariot). And it's in John that this man apparently gets his one moment of fame, one moment when everybody who has read the scriptures knows that he was there with the rest, most especially with Jesus. According to John 14:22, "Judas (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, 'Lord, what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not the the world?'" Then comes John 14:23-24: "Jesus answered him, 'Those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will go to them and make our home with them. A person who doesn't love me doesnt' do what I say. I don't make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.'" Jesus goes on, but that's all for Thaddaeus--except for the assumption that he's with the others when Mary bursts in, that he's with the others when they're with Jesus in those last days after the Resurrection. That's all except for the mention of his name when he's with the others to cast lots to decide who will replace Judas Iscariot and bring their number back to twelve.

After so momentous an experience as three years in the inner circle of Jesus, what happened to Thaddaeus? Did he wander the Middle East or into India, preaching and teaching and witnessing to the risen Christ, never writing or being written about? Did he die of old age or martyrdom? Or did he return to Galilee and fade away? If so, how is that possible after what he witnessed and experienced? Maybe he returned to Galilee and started a little Christian assembly there with James, son of Alphaeus, another of the disappeared disciples. Maybe he changed his name and joined another lost disciple, Simon the Zealot, in his guerilla struggle against Roman occupation, and both disappeared together.

What in the world happened to Thaddaeus?