Here on what has become known as “Spy Wednesday,” the church reminds us that Jesus’ suffering didn’t just begin with the physical pain at the scourging. The weight of the Garden of Gethsemane started earlier, and maybe one of the most challenging emotional scars is what we read of in the Gospel today. Anyone who a friend or family member has ever betrayed knows well that the psychological pain can be just as intense and sometimes leave deeper scars than the physical. This Gospel shows us the depth of His human experience by letting us glimpse a moment in which He was betrayed when one of His closest friends, one of the twelve, rejected Him and went off into the night for just 30 pieces of silver.
Jesus even offers Himself directly to Judas until Judas leaves His presence. Here at the Last Supper, the most intimate of meals between Jesus and His friends, Judas has the chance to receive the Eucharist, the gift of Jesus Himself. The chance to come into direct and intimate communion with God. Then, instead, He turns His back on Christ and walks into the darkness. Oh, how it hurts to have your friend turn their back on you, walk away from you when you are in your darkest place, in the depth of your pain. Even our emotional baggage has been taken to the cross by Jesus, who understands our loneliness, pain, and sorrow. I prefer to call today Holy Wednesday because Jesus took all our rejections, all of our emotional pain, and nailed them to the cross. He took every time we turned our backs by falling into sin and gave us a path to reconcile with the Church and God.
May God allow us to enter more fully into the mystery of Christ’s Passion, death, and resurrection as we journey together through Holy Week and into the Sacred Triduum. May the prayer of hearts indeed be that we become one with Christ as He is one with the Father, and may we be given the grace to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin.
A reflection on the readings for Wednesday of Holy Week: April 13th, 2022