Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
This accusation unsettled everyone at the table. They had come to see themselves as cohesive group, a team working toward the same goal. It must have been difficult to imagine that any of their brothers would not only turn aside from following Jesus but actively turn against him and betray him.
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.
The disciples seemed urgent, even excessively so, to find one at whom they could point the finger of accusation. Practically speaking, identifying the traitor might have allowed them to try to stop him. But they weren't really thinking clearly enough to be practical. The bombshell of the existence of a traitor had exposed the fragility of the group. The worst part was that it could have been any of them. They desired someone else whom they could blame especially to assuage the nagging suspicion that it might be any one of them.
And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, “Is it I, Lord?” (see Matthew 26:22).
That the disciples were distraught was evident in their lack of comprehension when Jesus answered, more or less clearly, the question of who the traitor would be.
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.
When Jesus told Judas, "What you are going to do, do quickly" the disciples were still shaken and confused. Still they were unwilling to fully recognize the fragility even in Judas lest it imply that they themselves might be similarly vulnerable.
So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.
It is difficult for us to accept when we hear that even someone who may have begun with a genuine commitment to Jesus and his movement might end by betraying him. When we hear of public scandal about figures in the Church, especially about those pertaining to the abuse crisis, we are rightly shocked and appalled. Yet we often forget that the most traumatic aspect of seeing Jesus betrayed is realizing that our own hearts have this same potential. We have the same initial risk factors for we all imagine his Kingdom will come in a certain way, according to our desires and preferences. Because of this, we too sometimes keep some blessings from the money bag, that are meant to be surrendered to him, so we can instead put them to work for more expedient plans to build a more immediate Kingdom. When we keep anything back from the Lord the risk is that, though it starts as something small, it will one day go so far as demanding our right even to grievous sin so that, when the peace of Christ and the consolation of the Spirit is too slow in coming, we can instead satisfy ourselves. We, in some sense, are Judas, and all those who have fulfilled his archetype throughout the ages. We may put on a mask of humility or, like Peter, a pretense of bravado, but the hour of darkness has a way of unmasking us.
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?
We needed Jesus himself to make us able to follow him. On our own, apart from him, where he went we could not go. But he went ahead of us to make a way for us to follow later. For us, part of the transformation is the self-knowledge that reveals our poverty apart from Christ, our inborn tendency to ourselves become the traitor. But this self-knowledge is only possible to hold in a helpful way in light of the still greater knowledge of God's love for us and his commitment to us in spite of our flaws and limitations. He knows our frame, that we are dust (see Psalm 103:14), but he him raises us from the dust even to follow him, to soar on the wings of eagles.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Jesus himself was the servant through whom God revealed his glory, through whom the tribes were gathered to the Lord, a light to the nations. But now, by the power of his Passion, we can become, and are meant to be, his servant as well. This prophesy of Isaiah was not only of the Messiah himself, but in turn all members of his body as well. Just as Isaiah wrote, we might feel as though much we had attempted by human effort was in vain in useless. But now, if we remain in Jesus, if we return to him whenever we fall, our reward too is with the Lord, our recompense in God himself is assured.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
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