Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Judas Iscariot (“the man of Keriot,” a town in Judah.) The name Judas was a common name among the Jews, so common in fact, that there were two of the Twelve who bore it: Jude, surnamed Thaddeus, and Judas, the traitor from Keriot. It is to distinguish the traitor from the faithful apostle that the Scriptures invariably mention the sinister Judas with the addition either of some reference to his treason, or else to his birthplace. Judas was the only one of the original Twelve who was not a Galilean—the only Judean in the apostolic company.
We know nothing about his parentage or early life. The evangelists are entirely silent about the circumstance of his call to the apostolate. When enumerated among the Twelve his name is always at the bottom of the list—that, and no more.
Saint Matthew relates, “When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.’ They said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.’ So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Therefore, that field has been called [Ḥaḳal Dama] the Field of Blood to this day.”[1]
Judas went to the high priests; they did not seek him out. To them it was a mere matter of business, dirty business to be sure, but why should they be particularly squeamish about the methods they used to attain their end if Christ’s own Apostle was not above such bargaining? The bartering goes on and finally Judas consented to betray his Lord for thirty pieces of silver.
The opportunity to enact the treachery was not to be long in coming. Jesus gathered His Apostles around Himself for the final meal—a love-feast, if ever there was one. Judas entered, polluting the spiritual atmosphere with his guilty soul. Is it hard to conjure up that image? The God-man, facing His own horrible passion and death and already beginning to be, as He Himself, said, “sorrowful even unto death,”[2] would endeavor to bolster up the fainting spirits of His friends before the dreadful ordeal began. That night, Jesus instituted the Blessed Sacrament, the greatest memorial of His love that He could give. The treasonous Apostle confronts Him throughout His act of love, and as He looks deep into the eyes of that hell-bound soul, how He must have ached for whatever good there might be left in Judas, yet it is in vain. Jesus warns the assembled Apostles that there is a traitor among them, and immediately, the Twelve reveal themselves in one of those unpremeditated spontaneous actions that reveal character so perfectly. They are stricken with horror at the thought that one of their number could fall so low. But they do not look at one another in suspicion. They ask not, “Who is it Lord?” But rather, “Is it I, Lord?” A remarkable testimony of their moral character. Each of them knows his weakness well enough to suspect himself before anyone else.
“One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast of Jesus; so Simon Peter beckoned to him and said, ‘Tell us who it is of whom he speaks.’ So lying thus, close to the breast of Jesus, he said to him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered, ‘It is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I have dipped it.’ So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after the morsel, Satan entered into him.”
Judas, compelled to ask the same question to avoid arousing suspicion, hears the direct, damning answer: Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”[3]
Even then Jesus did not expose Judas to the others. Saint John says, “Now, no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the money box, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast”; or, that he should give something to the poor.”[4] But Judas knew well enough what Jesus meant, and he obeyed the command. He went out to consummate his treachery.
The climax of his hypocrisy is reached in the irony of his kiss of friendship as the mark of betrayal. But Jesus’ great heart is not full of hatred toward His betrayer. The kiss delivered, Jesus is bound and led away, and the last drama of man’s redemption is well begun.
The eleven trusted Christ’s love; Judas did not. The Eleven were Christ’s heroes and most were martyred afterward. Judas lives on only in his treachery, bearing the contempt of mankind. Time and again, Jesus offered him opportunities for better things—Judas rejected them all. That note of lost opportunity is the keynote of his infamous career; he constantly spurned chances to rise above himself. He lives in memory as the greatest and most ignoble failure in the history of all mankind.
[1] Matthew 27:3-8.
[2] Ibid. 26:38.
[3] John 13:27.
[4] Ibid. 13:28-29.