Wednesday of Holy Week is a day traditionally focused on the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. One of the great gifts of the story of the Passion, and our commemoration of it in Holy Week, is the various characters with whom we can identify ourselves, and who reveal different aspects of Our Lord. The drama of the betrayal, almost incomprehensible in its horror, brings out as nothing else this week certain features of the heart of Our Lord.

A go-to book for me in Holy Week is Archbishop Alban Goodier’s The Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Here I will simply share some thoughts from Goodier that transformed my own thinking about the betrayal–and so also about Our Lord. When Judas and the mob arrived in the garden, we read that Our Lord went forward to meet them and asked, “Whom do you seek?” Goodier writes:

“Indeed the one aim of His whole life had been that men should seek Him, and in the end should find Him. He had invited them to come, He had complained that they would not come, He had promised all manner of good things to those who would… But what a different seeking was this! He had promised them that if they would seek Him He would give them life; now they came seeking that life indeed!”

And the crowd answers: “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Goodier goes on:

“It was said that a mere appeal in His name never failed to win His favor… [So, then] Jesus welcomed their cry of His name, as He always did. They might call to Him in hatred, yet should they have the same response as the best of His friends; if they wanted Him, for good or for evil, they should have him: ‘Jesus saith to them, I am he.’”

The evangelist (John) then writes, “And Judas also who betrayed him was with them.” Goodier suggests that in the evangelist’s mind in reporting this is that the Lord was first and foremost speaking to Judas, whom he knew to be right there in the front of the crowd. Goodier goes on:

“At this last moment Jesus would save him from the crime he was about to commit. He would forestall the act of treachery; he would surrender Himself so that there would be no need for Judas to carry out his evil promise. He was there before the rest, already nearest of them all to Jesus. It would be easy for him to get himself free. Let him leave the company with whom he had come; let him join the Three in the darkness; no one, not even the Eleven, need have known what he had done. This surely is the meaning of the sentence of St. John; even at the last moment Jesus was faithful to His own.”

Yet just a little bit hence, the betrayal is consummated. Goodier explains:

“Now was the moment of Judas to fulfill his contract. Jesus stood there alone, the light form the lanterns picking Him out in the darkness. He would have saved Judas, if Judas had chosen to be saved; but He would not compel him; never yet had He compelled anyone, nor would He ever do so. Judas should be allowed to do his worst; that terrible worst, which had haunted Jesus form the beginning, which, whenever He had thought of the Passion, had always stood out as the greatest shame of all. Judas came forward through the lighted space…It was the action of a moment; but it was the most terrible moment in the history of man.”

Yet of course we must not end here. The dominant reality, in this as in all human dramas, is the unwavering love that is never quenched. So we can conclude this oh-so-bitter moment with an image, and a word, that towers above the whole story:

“Secretly, as He had done before; affectionately, as he could not but always do; with that love which sought not its own, which endured all things, He answered Judas. While the hands of betrayal still clung about Him, while the sense of the indignity surged within Him, while all nature seemed to cry out against the deed of shame that was being done, Jesus whispered to Judas, the last words he was ever to hear from His lips: ‘And Jesus said to him, Friend…’” ~ ~ ~

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Sofia and I and our team wish you all a very blessed Holy Week and Easter!

John Cuddeback

Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.