Today we
remember Spy Wednesday, the day that Judas betrayed Jesus and handed Jesus over
to the Jewish leaders.
Judas’s
betrayal on a Wednesday is why the early Church (and many still today) fast
almost every Wednesday throughout the year.
There is a
really problematic and wrong understanding of why Judas betrayed Jesus, and I
would like to preach about why that wrong understanding has so many harmful
implications.
The general
wrong position is “Judas HAD to betray Jesus?” so God had Judas do
something evil so that something even better could come out of Judas’s
betrayal…. And so Judas may have just been performing a needed role for God.
But the
Gospels discredit all this. Jesus says
in today’s Gospel “woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is
betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been
born.”
So what is
the right way to understand these events?
First of
all, we need to know that God NEVER forces nor commands someone to
do wrong. God is incapable of having
anything to do with evil or sin.
And Here’s
the problem with thinking God CAN have someone do a wrong act – if God can have
people do a wrong act for good outcomes, then WE can start doing wrong acts for
“Good outcomes that we think will happen”
God ALLOWS evil, but only ever because God desires to bring something GREATER out of the allowed evil.
LITERALLY
ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE THE MOMENT A PERCEIVED FUTURE CONSEQUENCE CAN BE USED TO
JUSTIFY AN ACTION
And so it
has become fashionable to say such things, even in the Church today, that apparently
wrong acts might not actually BE wrong, as the circumstances or intentions
of an act might make a wrong act actually good.
But the
Chruch says that there are 3 things that make any human act according to the
Catechism paragraph 1750
1) Act
itself
2) Circumstances
surrounding the act
3) Intentions
of the person doing the act
And so if
the act itself is wrong, no circumstances nor our intentions can make that act
a good act
Catechism
paragraph 1753 provides us with an example
It says “A
good intention, for example, that of helping one's neighbor, does not make
behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or
just. The end does not justify the means.
The Catechism in paragraph 1755 says there are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely wrong; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery.
One
may not do evil so that good may result from it.
That is a
distinctly Catholic phrase that the Catechism repeats over and over again, the
perceived ends, which we can never actually know, never justify the means to
get to those ends
Jesus’ words
about Judas need to be with us always – Woe to that man by whom the son of man
is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been
born.
So what,
then, is the best way for each of us to proceed? First of all we need to pray for the Lord to always be
purifying our intentions.
Secondly, there is SO MUCH SUFFERING in our world. I think we can all look around and find one person who is carrying a cross of suffering, and our offering to help that person carry their cross is probably a big part of what God is hoping to bring out of whatever evil was done to that person.