Judas

From Magnificat's meditation for Spy Wednesday this week:

Judas, one of the chosen twelve, one of those to whom Jesus said, "I have not called you servants, but friends": he it is who is to betray his Master – for thirty pieces of silver. And Jesus knew it. For three years, he kept him there among his intimates, treating him like the rest, calling him to the same destiny, and surrounding him with the same delicate attentions. Nothing ever aroused a suspicion – except perhaps in John, where the intuition of love seems to have divined the traitor – a suspicion that he knew whom he had chosen, as he would say.

He even gave Judas a mark of special trust: he was the one who carried the purse belonging to the little band of Apostles. Already he had given evidence of being avaricious; and John had been keen enough to observe it.

As for Jesus, he closed his eyes to it and allowed time and grace to take their course. Before that heart, which was gradually closing itself against him, he opened up the treasures of his forbearance; he was prodigal of his forgiveness, that rare and precious gift which most men are nearly always reluctant to bestow.

What mystery there is in this attitude of Jesus confronted by the traitor. Perhaps nothing enables us to penetrate deeper into that heart than an analysis of what he must have felt then, at every contact.

He was willing to experience at length and in silence that royal sorrow of betrayal – of betrayal by an intimate, by on who has been showered with kindnesses. He had poured them forth upon Judas, knowing all the while that he would show himself a monster. He spoke to him with consideration, with the vision of his crime before him. He washed his feet on that Thursday evening, conscious that he had already been sold.

And in the garden of Gethsemane, when the miserable man had destroyed the last barrier that still held back the torrent of hatred, of iniquity, and of torture with his infamous kiss, the only revenge of Jesus was the gentle query: "My poor friend, what have you come here to do?" Once more he gave Judas the title of friend, which he had perhaps not applied to him at supper. He wanted him to know he had a right to it, as the final effort put forth by the patience of God.

--Father Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P.