The Gospel we have just heard takes place during the Last Supper, a few days after the passage we heard yesterday at Mass, also from St John, which recounted the supper at Bethany when Mary anointed the Lord’s feet with a pound of costly nard as a sign of her love for Him and her gratitude for raising her brother from the dead. In that Gospel we heard St John’s account of how Judas had complained at the waste of the perfume which could have been sold for an enormous price, as much as labourer’s wages for a year, to support the poor.
Now in some circles in recent times there has been a tendency to try and paint Judas in something of a heroic light; a flawed hero, yes, a failed hero, certainly, but nonetheless a man of high principles. He is proposed by some as a man who had looked for God’s kingdom to come by expelling the pagan Romans and re-establishing the glorious days of the kingdom of David. He had seen our Lord as just the kind of leader who might bring that about. He had the charisma, the power and the authority to lead the people in a religious and political revolt against foreign domination.
Yet Jesus had clearly failed to act. He had even famously failed to condemn paying taxes to Caesar. Now, according to some commentators, Judas sought to betray our Lord, not in order to have Him killed, but rather to try and provoke Jesus into leading the rebellion Judas had dreamed of. Judas was really a noble figure, they say, trying to bring about a great end, albeit in a very mistaken way which, of course, failed utterly. Instead of seeing Jesus resist arrest and lead the revolt, he saw Him captured and condemned to death. It was this failure of his plan that drove him, they say, to suicide.
Yet this is not the way St John saw it. Writing his gospel at the end of his very long life after years of meditation on those strange and wonderful events which we are now commemorating, John’s memory had not grown dim. Instead, he saw more clearly than ever the real issues at stake, and this is why he wrote about the betrayal in the way he did. For John rarely describes any event in our Lord’s life which the other evangelists had already dealt with, unless he wants to add something new, or show a differing perspective. This is just one such occasion. For whereas in the other Gospels, when Jesus announces at the Supper that one of those sitting with Him at table is about to betray Him, they all ask Him in turn, ‘Is it I, Lord?’. When Judas in his turn asks the question, our Lord replies to him, ‘they are your own words.’ John, however, remembers it differently, and from the viewpoint of one whom, according to his own account, ‘the Lord loved’, in a particular way.
It was because of his being ‘the disciple Jesus loved’ that he had a special place near to our Lord at the Supper, and on account of that Simon Peter asked him to find out secretly from the Lord who the betrayer was to be. John then recounts what our Lord told him privately, that it would be by a sign, the sign of the morsel dipped in the dish which He, the Lord, would then give to the betrayer.
This sign was then fulfilled in the giving of the morsel to Judas. Was this Communion with our Lord’s body and blood? This seems unlikely, both on account of the neutral word ‘morsel’, and the ‘dipping in the cup’ which belongs to the earlier stages of the supper. But
we must also remember that because John does not tell us directly of the institution of the Eucharist, we therefore cannot be absolutely certain, though the other evangelists do describe the institution of the eucharist taking place at the end of the supper, which must have been some time after Judas had left.
John does make it clear, however, that no one knew the identity of the betrayer but Jesus and John to whom He confided it. Hence the enigmatic words, ‘What you are to do, do quickly’ not being understood by anyone else in the room. This command of Our Lord’s given to Judas may well have meant that, after Jesus had made His last attempt to bring Judas back from the brink by the loving gesture of the morsel, nothing more could be done for him. So indeed John understands all this when he makes two striking comments: first that Satan now entered Judas, and secondly that when he went out, it was night. The clear meaning of the first statement confirms the interpretation just given of our Lord’s words here, that now as far as Judas is concerned all is lost forever. He is going to perdition, let him be as swift in this terrible self-destruction as he can be. Satan has now taken control of Judas, but this can only have happened by Judas’s own will. Judas had hardened his heart to refuse the last loving gesture of his Lord and Master. He had given himself over to Satan.
Moreover, John tells us that when Judas had gone, ‘it was night’, not merely the ordinary darkness when the sun has set, but a spiritual darkness, a terrible state in which the light is eclipsed by Satan’s darkness. It is the end of the ‘day’ in which our Lord had said He must work and the beginning of the ‘night’ in which no one can work, and now in a short time all our Lord will be able to do is to suffer Satan’s hatred and malice, his utter darkness.
This brings us to another important point: the contrast between Judas and Peter. Both will fail our Lord spectacularly this coming night, but in different ways and with infinitely differing ends. After Judas has left, Our Lord mysteriously tells the eleven of His impending leaving of them, so much that they cannot follow Him where He is going. Peter indignantly declares that he, at least, will lay down his life for the Master. Jesus’s reply is a warning, that far from staying firm to his own death, Peter will deny any knowledge of Jesus thrice before morning.
It is a devastating prediction. One can only imagine how Peter reacted to it, with dumbfounded consternation. And he does indeed fail just as our Lord had foretold. Yet at the end of the night, Judas will be on the way to perdition, while Peter will begin the long, hard road to penance and restoration. What is the secret of the different fates of these two Apostles? Judas is the one who, St John tells us, is corrupted by his love of money. The three hundred lost denarii of Mary’s perfumed oil now give way to the thirty silver pieces, the price put by the Chief Priests and Judas on his Master’s head. Peter, on the other hand, although weak and fickle, puts an infinite value on his Master. After the Resurrection, Peter will make amends for tonight precisely by answering the question, ‘Simon, do you love me?’ This is what matters. Peter’s answer is the entire difference between him and Judas. It is his love which will enable him to seek forgiveness where Judas had seen no hope of forgiveness, for he had no love for Jesus. This is the heart of John’s message concerning Jesus, Judas and Peter on the night of the Last Supper; the meaning and the cost of true love. That which leads Judas to suicide, leads Peter to repentance, and Jesus to the Cross.
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