Tuesday, April 7, 2020, The Tuesday of Holy Week

John 13:21-33, 36-38

Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant. One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ side. So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant. He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him, “Master, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.” So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him. So Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” Now none of those reclining at table realized why he said this to him. Some thought that since Judas kept the money bag, Jesus had told him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or to give something to the poor. So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night. 

When he had left, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you.” 

Simon Peter said to him, “Master, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, though you will follow later.” Peter said to him, “Master, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow before you deny me three times.”

We do not know very much about Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.  He or his family was probably from a town in southern Judea named “Kerioth”, as “Iscariot” is certainly the Hebrew ish kerioth, meaning “man of Kerioth”.  We learn from St. John that he was charged by Jesus to hold the common funds the Apostles would have used for food (cf. John 12, 6), although he stole from them.  The fact that he held the funds might mean that he was accustomed to work with money and so was possibly a former tax collector, like Matthew.  His outspoken outrage at what he saw as the waste of the nard in Mary’s anointing of Jesus, which we read about in yesterday’s reading, seems very strange, and an insult to the Lord as much as to Mary, one his hosts at the dinner.  John gives greed for the large amount of money that the sale of the nard would have brought as the reason for this, and that would certainly tie in with his seeking money for the betrayal of Jesus.  Even so, the violence of the outrage remains hard to explain.  Certainly he was already alienated from our Lord’s teaching, and the initial wonder he must have felt for Christ’s miracles has worn off.  But he does not simply give up and go home.  Anger fills his heart.  Does he feel slighted that Jesus has recognized Peter as the rock on which he will build his Church?  Is he jealous that Jesus has a special love for John?  We would gain some insight if the Gospel writers told us about why Judas decides to hand Jesus over to men whom he must have known wanted to kill him, but they do not.  It is hard to conclude that greed alone urged him on to this act.  Estimates of the value of the thirty pieces of silver he received hover around two hundred dollars in modern money.  John does say that “Satan entered him” after Judas took the morsel from Jesus, but this simply seems to mean that Judas was roused to commit an act which he already decided upon.  In whatever way, through greed, envy, or anger, Satan had entered his heart long before the Last Supper.  

Satan can only enter a heart when it is opened to him.  It is opened to him when a person lives for himself and not for God.  Often this comes through pride.  In the case of Judas, it may have been hurt pride.  This seems to be the case with Cain, too, so many years ago.  A person makes himself his own god and spends his life serving himself so as to attain pleasure or power or whatever else.  But this kind of life is empty and ultimately unsatisfying and self-destructive.  We see later how Judas realizes the money he has taken in exchange for his fellowship with the Lord is worthless and he casts it back at the indifferent Jewish leaders who have it to him.  Too late, he knows that he has allowed himself to be a pawn in their assault against the Lord.  He completes his self-destruction with his terrible death.

Judas made his choice and we must make ours.  In this life their are only two possibilities.  As God said to the Hebrews as they stood before the Promised Land, “I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both you and your seed may live: And that you may love the Lord your God, and obey his voice, and adhere to him (for he is thy life, and the length of your days,) that you may dwell in the land, for which the Lord swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would give it them.”  There is life with Christ, or self-destruction.  Let us pray for the grace to love God with all our heart and to persevere in his love and faith so that we might enter the Promised Land of his embrace in heaven.