Tuesday of Holy Week
March 26, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032624.cfm

Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.
One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,
was reclining at Jesus’ side.
So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant.
He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him,
“Master, who is it?”
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.

John 13: 21-26

To be betrayed is so much worse than to be outright opposed! An opponent is someone who stands against you from the beginning. You know who they are. You know how to protect yourself from them.

But a betrayer is someone who turns on you after you have given your trust. With that trust, you have handed over all your tools for self-protection. You are left vulnerable to their inconstancy.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We pray to be a true-hearted person, one who deserves and keeps the confidence of God and of our companions on the journey.

We pray to understand the weaknesses that may have motivated Judas, and to ask God to heal us of any trace of them in our own hearts.

Poetry: Judas Iscariot by Countee Cullen (1925)

This long but simple poem offers an interesting take on Judas.
Countee Cullen was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement centered in the cosmopolitan community of Harlem, in New York City, which had attracted talented migrants from across the country. During the 1920s, a fresh generation of African-American writers emerged, although a few were Harlem-born. Other leading figures included Alain Locke (The New Negro, 1925), James Weldon Johnson (Black Manhattan, 1930), Claude McKay (Home to Harlem, 1928), Langston Hughes (The Weary Blues, 1926), Zora Neale Hurston (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934), Wallace Thurman (Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life, 1929), Jean Toomer (Cane, 1923) and Arna Bontemps (Black Thunder, 1935).(information from Wikipedia)

I think when Judas' mother heard
His first faint cry the night
That he was born, that worship stirred
Her at the sound and sight.

She thought his was as fair a frame
As flesh and blood had worn;
I think she made this lovely name
For him— "Star of my morn."

As any mother's son he grew
From spring to crimson spring;
I think his eyes were black, or blue,
His hair curled like a ring.

His mother's heart-strings were a lute
Whereon he all day played;
She listened rapt, abandoned, mute,
To every note he made.

I think he knew the growing Christ,
And played with Mary's son,
And where mere mortal craft sufficed,
There Judas may have won.

Perhaps he little cared or knew,
So folly-wise is youth,
That He whose hand his hand clung to
Was flesh-embodied Truth;

Until one day he heard young Christ,
With far-off eyes agleam,
Tell of a mystic, solemn tryst
Between Him and a dream.

And Judas listened, wonder-eyed,
Until the Christ was through,
Then said, “And I, though good betide,
Or ill, will go with you."

And so he followed, heard Christ preach,
Saw how by miracle
The blind man saw, the dumb got speech,
The leper found him well.

And Judas in those holy hours,
Loved Christ, and loved Him much,
And in his heart he sensed dead flowers
Bloom at the Master's touch.

And when Christ felt the death hour creep,
With sullen, drunken lurch,
He said to Peter, "Feed my sheep,
And build my holy church.”

He gave to each the special task
That should be his to do,
But reaching one, I hear him ask,
“What shall I give to you?”

Then Judas in his hot desire
Said, "Give me what you will."
Christ spoke to him with words of fire,
“Then, Judas, you must kill,

One whom you love, One who loves you
As only God's son can:
This is the work for you to do
To save the creature man."

"And men to come will curse your name,
And hold you up to scorn;
In all the world will be no shame
Like yours; this is love's thorn.

It takes strong will of heart and soul,
But man is under ban.
Think, Judas, can you play this role
In heaven's mystic plan?"

So Judas took the sorry part,
Went out and spoke the word,
And gave the kiss that broke his heart,
But no one knew or heard.

And no one knew what poison ate
Into his palm that day,
Where, bright and damned, the monstrous weight
Of thirty white coins lay.

It was not death that Judas found
Upon a kindly tree;
The man was dead long ere he bound
His throat as final fee.

And who can say if on that day
When gates of pearl swung wide,
Christ did not go His honored way
With Judas by His side?

I think somewhere a table round
Owns Jesus as its head,
And there the saintly twelve are found
Who followed where He led.

And Judas sits down with the rest,
And none shrinks from His hand,
For there the worst is as the best,
And there they understand.

And you may think of Judas, 'friend,
As one who broke his word,
Whose neck came to a bitter end
For giving up his Lord.

But I would rather think of him
As the little Jewish lad
Who gave young Christ heart, soul, and limb,
And all the love he had.

Music: Heaven On Their Minds – Judas’s song from Jesus Christ Superstar