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Friday, October 30, 2015

THE MYSTERY OF JUDAS ISCARIOT


THE MYSTERY OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

 
  Only two creatures in the world knew the secret of Judas: Christ and the traitor.

Sixty generations of Christians have racked their brains over it, but the man of Iscariot, although he has drawn after him crowds of disciples, remains stubbornly incomprehensible. His is the only human mystery that we encounter in the Gos­pels. We can understand without difficulty the depravity of Herod, the rancor of the Pharisees, the revengeful anger of Annas and Caiaphas, the cowardly laxity of Pilate. But we have no evidence to enable us to understand the abomination of Judas. The Four Gospels tell us too little of him and of the reasons which induced him to sell his King.

  "Then entered Satan into Judas." (Luke 22:3) But these words are only the definition of his crime. Evil took possession of his heart, therefore it came suddenly. Before that day, perhaps during the Supper at Bethany (John 13:27), Judas was not in the power of the Adversary. But why suddenly did he throw himself into that power? Why did Satan enter into him and not into one of the others?

 Thirty pieces of silver are a very small sum, especially for a greedy man. In modern coinage it would amount to about twenty dollars, and, granting that its effective value or as the economists say its buying power were in those days ten times greater, two hundred dollars seem hardly a sufficient price to induce a man whom his companions describe as grasp­ing to commit the basest betrayal recorded by history. It has been said the thirty pieces of silver was the price of a slave. But the text of Exodus states on the contrary that thirty shekels was the compensation to be paid by the owner of an ox which had injured a slave. The cases are too far apart for the doctors of the Sanhedrin to have had this early prece­dent in mind.

  The most significant indication is the office which Judas held among the Twelve. Among them was Matthew, a former tax-collector, and it would have seemed almost his right to handle the small amount of money necessary for the expenses of the brotherhood. In place of Matthew, we see the man of Iscariot as the depository of the offerings. Money is treacherous and saturated with danger. The mere handling of money, even if it belongs to others, is poisonous. It is not surprising that John said of Judas the thief, that he, "having the bag, took away what was put therein." (John 12:6) And yet it is not probable that a man greedy for money would have stayed a long time with a group of such poor men. If he had wished to steal, he would have sought out a more promising position. And if he had needed those miserable thirty pieces of silver, could he not have procured them in another way, by running away with the purse, without needing to propose the betrayal of Jesus to the High Priests?

  These common-sense reflections about a crime so extraordi­nary have induced many to seek other motives for the infamous transaction. A sect of heretics, the Cainites, had a legend that Judas sorrowfully accepted eternal infamy, knowing that Jesus through His will and the will of the Father was to be be­trayed to His death that no suffering might be lacking in the great penance and punishment. A necessary and voluntary instrument of the Redemption, Judas was according to them a hero and a martyr to be revered and not reviled.

  According to others, Iscariot, loving his people and hoping for their deliverance, perhaps sharing the sentiments of the Zealots, had joined with Jesus, hoping that he was the Messiah such as the common people then imagined Him: the King of the revenge and restoration of Israel. When little by little, in spite of his slowness of comprehension, it dawned on him from the words of Jesus that he had fallen in with a Messiah of quite another kind, he delivered Him over to His enemies to make up for the bitterness of his disappointment. But this fancy to which no text either canonical or apocryphal gives any support is not enough to explain Christ's betrayer: he could have deserted the Twelve and gone in search of other company more to his taste, which certainly, as we have seen, was not lacking at that time.

  Others have said that the reason is to be sought in his loss of faith. Judas had believed firmly in Jesus, and then could believe no longer. What Jesus said about His end close at hand, the threatening hostility of the capital, the delay of His victorious manifestation, had ended by causing Judas to lose all faith in Him whom he had followed up till then. He did not see the Kingdom approaching and he did see death approaching. Mingling with the people to find out the tem­per of the day, he had perhaps heard a rumor as to the de­cisions of the meeting of the Elders and feared that the San­hedrin would not be satisfied with one victim alone, but would condemn all those who had long followed Jesus. Overcome by fear—the form which Satan took to enter into him—he thought he could ward off the danger and save his life by treachery; unbelief and cowardice being thus the embarrassing motives of his shame.

  An Englishman celebrated as an opium-eater, has thought out a new apology for the traitor which is the opposite of this theory. His idea is that Judas believed: he even believed too absolutely. He was so persuaded that Jesus was really the Christ that he wished by giving Him up to the Tribunal to force Him finally to show Himself as the legitimate Messiah. So strong was his hope that he could not believe that Jesus would be killed. Or if He really were to die, he knew with entire certainty that He would rise again at once to sit on the right hand of the Father as King of Israel and of the world. To hasten the great day, in which the Disciples were at last to have the reward for their faithfulness, Judas, secure in the intangibility of his Divine Friend, wished to force His hand and, putting Him face to face with those whom He was to cast out, to compel Him to show Himself as the true Son of God. According to this theory the action of Judas was not a betrayal but a mistake due to his misunderstanding of the real meaning of his Master's teaching. He did not betray therefore through greed or revengefulness or cowardice, but through stupidity.

  On the other hand others give revenge as the reason. No man betrays another without hating him. Why did Judas hate Jesus? They remember the dinner in the house of Simon and the nard of the weeping woman. The reproof for his stinginess and hypocrisy must have exasperated the disciple who perhaps had been reproved for these faults on other occasions. To the malice of this rebuff was added envy which always flourishes in vulgar souls. And as soon as he could re­venge himself without danger, he went to the palace of Caiaphas.

  But did he really think that his denunciation would bring Jesus to His death or did he rather suppose that they would content themselves with flogging Him and forbidding Him to speak to the people? The rest of the story seems to show that the condemnation of Jesus unnerved him as a terrible and unexpected result of his kiss. Matthew describes his de­spair in a way to show that he was sincerely horrified by what had happened through his fault. The money which he had pocketed became like fire to him: and when the priests refused to take it back he threw it down in the Temple. Even after this restitution he had no peace and hastened to kill himself. He died on the same day as his victim. Luke in the Acts sets down in another way the evil end of Judas, but the Chris­tian tradition fancies the story of his remorse and suicide.

  In spite of all the unraveling of unsatisfied minds, mys­teries are still tangled about the mystery of Judas. But we have not yet invoked the testimony of Him who knew better than all men, even better than Judas, the true secret of the betrayal. Jesus alone could give us the key to the mystery; Jesus Who saw into the heart of Judas as into the hearts of all men, and Who knew what Judas was to do before he had done it. Judas needed salvation and refused to be saved.

  Jesus chose Judas to be one of the Twelve and to carry the gospel to the world along with the others, even though He knew his final choices. Would He have chosen him, kept him with Him, beside Him, at His table, for so long a time if He had believed him to be an incurable criminal? Would He have confided to him what was dearest in the world to Him, the most precious thing in the world—the prophecy of the Kingdom of God? Obviously, the answer is yes. He loved even His enemies.

  Up to the last days, up to that last evening, Jesus treated Judas exactly like the others. To him, as to all others, He gave His body, symbolized by bread, His soul, symbolized by wine. (John 13:5) He washed and wiped, with His own hands, the feet of Judas, those feet which had carried him to the house of Caiaphas—with those hands which, through Judas' fault, were to be nailed to the cross on the following day. And when, in the red light of the flickering lanterns and the flash­ing of swords, Judas, under the dark shadow of the olive trees, came and kissed that face still wet with bloody sweat, Jesus did not repel him, but said, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" (Matt. 26:50)

  Friend! (John 15:14) He had commanded him to go do what he was told. (John 13:27) It was the last time that Jesus spoke to Judas, and even in that moment He would use none other than that customary word. Judas was not for Him the man of darkness who came in the darkness to turn Him over to the guards, but the friend, the same who a few hours before had been sitting with Him before the dish of lamb and herbs, and had set his lips to His cup: the same who, so many times in hours of rest in leafy shade, or in the shadow of walls, had listened with the others like a disciple, like a companion, like a friend, like a brother, to the great words of the Promise. Jesus had said at the Last Supper, "Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born." (Matt. 26:24; Mark 14:21) But now that the traitor was before Him, that the treachery was complete, now that Judas had added to that betrayal the outrage of the kiss laid on the lips of Him who has commanded love for our enemies, He answered him with the sweet and divine words of their habitual inter­course, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" (Matt. 26:50)

  Thus the testimony of Him who was betrayed increases our bewilderment instead of raising the veil of the dreadful secret. He knew that Judas was a thief and He gave him the purse: He knew that Judas was evil and He confided to him a treasure of truth infinitely more precious than all the money in the universe: He knew that Judas was to betray Him and He made him a participant of His divinity, offering him the mouthful of bread and the sip of wine; He saw Judas leading His assail­ants upon Him and He still addressed him as at first, as He always had, with the holy name of friend.

  "It had been good for that man if he had not been born." (Matt. 26:24; Mark 14:21) These words might have been, rather than a condemnation, an exclamation of pity at the thought of a fate which could not be escaped. If Judas hated Jesus, we see no signs that Jesus was ever repelled by Judas, because Jesus knew that the base bargain was necessary, as the weakness of Pilate was necessary, the rage of Caiaphas, and the insults of the soldiery, the timbers and nails of the cross. He knew that Judas needed to do what he did and He did not curse him, as He did not curse the people who wished His death, or the hammer which drove the nails into the cross. One prayer alone broke from him, to beg Judas to shorten the dreadful agony, "That thou doest, do quickly." (John 13:27)

  The mystery of Judas is doubly tied to the mystery of the Redemption and we lesser ones shall never solve it.

  No analogy can give us light. Joseph also was sold by one of his brothers, who, like Iscariot, was called Judas, and was sold to Ishmaelite merchants for twenty pieces of silver, but Joseph, who prefigured Christ, was not sold to his enemies, was not sold to be put to death: and as a compensation for his betrayal, great good fortune was his and he became so wealthy that he could enrich his father, and so generous that he could pardon even his brothers.

  Jesus was not only betrayed, but sold, sold for a price, sold for a small price, bought with coins. He was the, object of a bargain, a bargain struck and paid. Judas, the man of the purse, the cashier, did not present himself as an accuser, did not offer himself as a cut-throat, but as a merchant doing business in blood. *The Jews, who understood bartering for blood, daily cutting the throats of victims, and quartering them, butchers of the Most High, were the first and last cus­tomers of Judas. *The sale of Jesus was the first business dune by the merchant, just entering business; not very big business, it must be admitted, but a real, true commercial transaction, a valid contract of buying and selling, verbal, but honestly lived up to by the contracting parties. If Jesus had not been sold, something would have been lacking to the per­fect shame of His penance and punishment: if He had been sold for more money, for three hundred shekels instead of thirty, for gold instead of silver, the disgrace would have been diminished, slightly, but still diminished. It had been destined to all eter­nity that He should be bought, but bought with a small sum. In order that an infinite, supernatural but communicable value should be made available to men, it was needful to buy it with a small sum, and with a sum of metal, which has no real value. Did Jesus bought by others do also the same, He who wished to redeem with the blood of only one man all the blood shed on the earth from the days of Cain to Caiaphas?

  And if He had been sold as a slave, as so many living souls were sold in those days in the public places, if He had been sold as redeemable property, as human capital, as a living tool for work, the dishonor would have been almost nothing, and the Redemption put off. But He was sold as the calf is sold to the butcher, as the innocent animals which the butcher buys to kill, to sell again, and to distribute in morsels to flesh-eaters. The sacred butcher, Caiaphas, never in his most successful days had a victim so phenomenal. For more than two thousand years Christians have been fed on that victim, and it is still intact, and those who feed are not gratified.

  Every one of us has contributed his quota, an infinitesimal quota, to buy that victim from Judas. We have all contributed towards the sum for which the blood of the Redeemer was bought: Caiaphas was only our agent. The field of Aceldama, bought with the price of blood, is our inheritance, our property. And this field has grown mysteriously larger, has spread over half the face of the earth: whole populous cities, paved, lighted, well-ordered cities, of shops and brothels, shine resplendent on it from north to south. And that the mystery should be even greater, Judas' money, also multiplied by the betrayals of so many centuries, by the accumulation of interest, has become incalculably great. Nothing is as fruitful and bountiful as blood. The statisticians, those fortune-tellers of modern days, can bear witness to the fact that all the courts of the Temple could not contain the money produced from that day to this by those thirty pieces of silver cast down there in a delirium of remorse, by the man who sold his God.

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