Wednesday in Holy Week, March 31, 2021

Matthew 26:14-25

One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over. On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, My appointed time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.”  The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered, and prepared the Passover.  When it was evening, he reclined at table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” Deeply distressed at this, they began to say to him one after another, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” He said in reply, “He who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me. The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” Then Judas, his betrayer, said in reply, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” He answered, “You have said so.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass again brings Judas Iscariot to the forefront.  The Evangelists pay much attention to him and describe his movements in order to understand him and what he did.  For instance, Jesus is quoted as speaking of his Apostles and then saying that one of them is “a devil”.  For the early Christians and for those considering becoming a Christian in the early days of the Church, an important question would have been, Why should I be a follower of this man when one of his closest followers not only left him, but betrayed him?  It seems that the Evangelists sought to answer this question in various ways.  Matthew implies that Judas became disillusioned by the Lord’s words when the woman anointed him at Bethany, because directly afterwards he went to the chief priests.  We could speculate that Jesus allowing a woman unrelated to him to touch him might have caused the disillusionment; or the Lord’s words showing his lack of concern about money; or the Lord’s increasingly persistent words about his coming Passion and Death might also have caused it.  Perhaps Judas realized before the other Apostles that Jesus had no intention of reestablishing the Kingdom of Israel and as a result he felt Jesus had misled him.

St. Thomas Aquinas makes a good point about Judas going to the priests.  He says that we see how little he valued Jesus by asking them, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?”  Thomas says that when we believe we own something of great value and we wish to sell it, we tell potential buyers how much they will have to pay for it.  But if we own something we simply want to get rid of, we ask potential buyers what they will give for it, and we are glad to take their offer, whatever it is.  And this is what Judas did when selling Jesus.  He did not say, Pay me ten talents of silver and I will deliver him to you.  He asked, What would you be willing to give me?  He phrases the question almost as an apology: I know he is not worth much, but what would you give for him?  This also indicates for us how much Judas must have despised Jesus, that he would take so little for him.  This would go well with the idea that Judas felt himself betrayed by the Lord, whose kingdom was spiritual and not physical, as Judas and the others had expected all along.

What is Jesus worth to us?  What would we give to make him safe, to buy him back from his enemies?  What would we do to be with him forever?  We should think about his worth to us, and how would we show him this in our lives.