LENT 2024: DAY 27 - Friday March 15

 

“In the meantime, what happened to Judas?... Christ was delivered into the hands of His enemies, but from within. The greatest harm that is done is not always from the enemies, but from those who have been cradled in His sacred associations. It is the failure of those within that provides opportunities for enemies who are still without.

 

The hatred of Judas against Our Blessed Lord was due to the contrast between his sin and the virtue of the Divine Master. Iago says of Cassio: “He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.” Judas’ disgust with himself was vented on One Who made him uncomfortable by His Goodness.

 

The betrayal took place with a kiss. When wickedness would destroy virtue and when man would crucify the Son of God, there is felt a necessity to preface the evil deed by some mark of affection. Judas would compliment and deny Divinity with the same lips. Only one word came back in answer to the kiss: “Friend.” It was the last time Our Lord spoke to Judas. For the moment, he was not the traitor but a friend. He had had the right to the fatted calf, but he had rejected it.

 

“And now Judas, His betrayer, was full of remorse at seeing Him condemned, so that he brought back to the chief priest and elders their thirty pieces of silver; ‘I have sinned’, he told them, ‘in betraying the blood of an Innocent Man.’” (Matthew 27:3)

 

Though in English we have both Peter and Judas “repenting”, the Greek words used in the original are different for Judas and for Peter. The word used in connection with Judas signifies only a change of feeling, a regret of the consequences, a desire of undoing what had been done. This kind of repentance did not ask for pardon… Evidently the devil “left him for a time”, which gave Judas time to regret his action and to return the money. But later the devil returned to drive him to despair.

 

The condemnation of Our Lord produced a double effect; one on Judas, the other on the chief priests of the Sanhedrin. On Judas, it produced the bondage of guilt through the agony of his conscience. The thirty pieces of silver within his purse were weighing him down; he ran to the temple, took the shekels from the money bag and threw them mockingly across the pavement floor of the Holy Place. To get rid of the very advantage of his betrayal was a sign that he was none the richer for the thing that he had gained, and infinitely poorer because of the way he had gained it.

 

No one has ever denied Christ or sold Him for any fleeting pleasure or temporary recompense, without realizing that he has bartered Him away out of all proportion to His due worth. Judas seemed to be getting so much when the bargain was struck. Afterward, he took the money back to the temple and threw the silver coins jingling and rolling across the floor, because he no longer wanted what he had bargained for. He had cheated himself. The fruits of sin never compensate for the loss of grace. The money was good for nothing now except to buy a field of blood.

 

The shekels lay in the temple where Judas had thrown them. The chief priests hated both them and Judas, their miserable tool. He tried to throw responsibility on the Sanhedrin; they tossed it back in his face… But the money must not be left on the temple floor, and so the chief priests gathered it up, saying: “It must not be put in the treasury, since it is the price of blood; and after consultation, they used it to buy the potter’s field, as a burial place for strangers; it is upon that account that the field has been called Haceldama, the field of blood, to this day.” (Matthew 27:6-8)

 

Judas was repentant unto himself, but not unto the Lord. He was disgusted with the effects of his sin, but not with the sin. Everything can be pardoned except the refusal to seek pardon… His remorse was only a self-hatred, and self-hatred is suicidal.

 

When a man hates himself for what he had done and is without repentance to God, he will sometimes pound his breast as if to blot out a sin. There is a world of difference between pounding a breast in self-disgust and pounding it with the mea culpa in which one asks for pardon. Sometimes this self-hatred can become so intense as even to pound the life out of a man, and thus it leads to suicide… And so, down the valley of Cedron Judas went… Everything around him seemed to tell of his destiny and his end… Throwing a rope over the limb of a tree, he hanged himself as his bowels burst asunder.

 

An interesting parallel can be drawn between Peter and Judas. There are some similarities, and yet such tremendous differences.

 

First, Our Lord called them both “devils”. He called Peter “Satan” when he rebuked Him for saying He would be crucified; He called Judas a devil when He promised the Bread of Life.

 

Second, He warned both that they would fall. Peter said that even though others would deny the Master he would not. Whereupon, he was told that during that very night, before the cock crowed Peter would deny Him thrice. Judas, in his turn was warned when offered the dipped bread; and he was also told, in answer to his question, that he was the betrayer.

 

Third, both denied Our Lord: Peter to the maidservants during the night trial; Judas in the garden when he delivered Our Lord to the soldiers.

 

Fourth, Our Lord tried to save both: Peter through a look and Judas by addressing him as “Friend.”

 

Fifth, both repented: Peter went out and wept bitterly; Judas repented by taking back the thirty pieces of silver and affirming the innocence of Our Lord.

 

Why, then, is one at the head of the list, the other at the bottom? Because Peter repented unto the Lord and Judas unto himself. The difference was as vast as… a Cross and a psychoanalytic couch. Judas said he had “betrayed innocent blood”, but he never wished to be bathed in it. Peter knew he had sinned and sought redemption; Judas knew he had made a mistake and sought escape – the first of the long army of escapists from the Cross.”

 

 

(Chapter 46, pgs. 756 – 762)

+ FRASES PARA LEER