It hurts to be betrayed and have our trust eroded, our nerves exposed. Embarrassed. Anxious. Tired. But when it’s a friend. That’s when it hurts the most. Someone you’ve shared your life with, your hopes, your dreams. Spent time within a conversation, listened to, joked, and laughed with. When Jesus quotes that verse from Psalm 41 about lifting one’s heel, that’s what he’s talking about. That Psalm says, “Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me.”
Jesus knew beforehand that Judas would betray Him, and He chose Him anyway. He chose him to offer a chance, redemption, love, salvation. Judas still, of his own free will, chose the path that led to despair and death, how it must have hurt Jesus to know that Judas was going to make that choice, but to not interfere out of love and allow him to act of his own free will.
How about in our own lives? Easter is a time of rejoicing, but it’s also a reminder that we are still on the journey. We, too, betray Jesus when we sin, and we do so of our own free will. God loves us so much and how it must hurt when we, His children, turn away from that which is right and Holy and go for things that lead away from Him.
And there he waits, in the confessional, to wash our feet and remove the dirt we’ve picked up on the road since our Baptism, and make us clean again. That’s how we mend that friendship; that’s how we remove that hurt and restore that trust. Especially by saying and meaning these words from the act of contrition: “I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to do penance, sin no more, and avoid whatever leads me to sin.”
If I could only ask one thing of you, if I could give you a single piece of advice on what all the Saints have said about becoming a saint, it’s this: please make use of Confession frequently, reverently, sincerely. It’s not just for the serious stuff; sometimes, it’s just to wash off the grime before it can spiral out of control. It only takes a pebble to start an avalanche. We need to let Jesus remove those stones from our lives before they can start to fall around us and make a mess.