“Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” (Mt. 26:21)
For the second day in a row, we are encountering Judas the betrayer of Jesus. Yesterday we read from the Gospel of John and today we read from the Gospel of Matthew. As Holy Week reveals the Passover, the death, and resurrection of Jesus we can find a familiar theme: Love in the Midst of Duplicity.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart133 do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.” (CCC 1859) With this in mind, one cannot help but wonder why Jesus would call someone into his inner circle of disciples knowing full well the gravity of Judas’ betrayal. Perhaps to fulfill Zechariah’s prophecy? Or perhaps to show us the depth of His love “that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8)
Even after baptism, even after receiving Christ in the Eucharist, because of the concupiscence of our flesh, we are capable of committing mortal sin. This is the duplicity of our life as followers of Christ. We are in the inner circle of Christ’s chosen yet still choose to betray him through our words and actions.
Does Jesus ever call you out and point at a sin that you knowingly hold close to you and your response is, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” (Mt. 26:25) As we enter the most solemn days of the Church, let us not receive His love in a state of duplicity. “Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting in punishment.” (Joel 2:13)
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The question you ask, “why would Jesus call someone to his inner circle knowing he would betray him?” Is an extremely challenging question. Judas presents a difficulty to a lot of Catholic philosophy. I cant claim to be an expert but I have been reading on topics tangent to this quite recently.
Things we have to accept as true:
-Judas had a choice, he was not predestined to betrayal, otherwise he would have no hope for salvation, would be an anti-Mary condemned at his very conception.
-Jesus did know that Judas would betray him. We know this in the philosophical sense that God is omniscient, but also in a basic sense that Christ *tells us he knows*.
-Judas could have repented. Just yesterday I read an article by a Thomist that said the repentance of Judas would have been a world historical event--this connects to Truth #1, that he had a choice. God could have used Judas’ repentance to save the world as much as he did use his betrayal.
So if all three of those are true, again, why did Christ accept him? I like to think that Christ knew what COULD happen--for good or ill--and chose to believe in the best of Judas. Kind of like a couple where one tries to change the other, perhaps to cure him or her of a drinking problem. Why accept them? Because when you love someone, you choose to see the good they could do more than the bad they are likely to do. Christ loved Judas as much as he loves all of us, and died on the cross for his sins, too--even the betrayal that led to the cross in the first place. So Christ accepting Judas could be construed as a testimony of love for his fallen creation, no matter what.
This turned into more of a stream of consciousness than I intended, thank you for the thought provoking post!