Today in our Liturgy we celebrate the special day known as Good Wednesday, Spy Wednesday or Holy Wednesday.
Spy Wednesday refers to today’s Gospel of Matt. 26:14-25 in which we and the twelve disciples learn of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. Matthew turns the transaction into a dialogue. Judas bargains away his Messiah with the chief priests. He agrees to hand him over for thirty pieces of silver. Judas provides the catalyst for the plot to go into action.
Jesus was keeping the Passover with the Twelve when he announced that one of them would betray him. They were so distressed to hear this that they each asked if he was the one. The sign that Jesus’ gave was a gesture of Semite friendship and intimacy, dipping one’s hand into the same bowl with Jesus. This was probably an allusion to Psalm 41:10 “Even my trusted friend, who ate my bread, has raised his heel against me.” It seemed that Judas was Jesus trusted friend, which made the realization of the betrayal even more painful. The time had come, the agony had begun.
In our lives when we find ourselves as the betrayer are the betrayed, it is very painful. Serious betrayals of our trusted friends, our community or our vows, require reconciliation with God and with the persons we have turn against or have turned against us.
But betrayal also happens whenever we turn against the situations where we are being called to respond in love to our families, persons’ dignity, or the injustices in our world such as racism, sexism, poverty, war to mention only a few. Do we find ourselves when facing these realities, respond, “Surely it is not I.”?
Tomorrow, we enter the prayer of the Triduum, we have the model of Jesus to move beyond betrayals to new life.