Judas.

As we enter the Triduum, the betrayal of Christ comes to the fore. The following is from Magnificat.

Judas

Judas is the symbol in the human world, as Satan is in the spirit world, of non-being, of self-destruction, of life-refusal. Moved (as seems most probable: we are told in the Gospel that “he was a thief”) by an ignoble greed he commits the most ignoble of sins, betraying his master and friend with a kiss; yet even so all need not have been lost, all would not have been lost, if, when he threw down teh silver, the purchase-price of blood, he had had not remorse but repentance in his heart. His darkness might have been creative, as was Peter’s; but there is nothing creative about remorse, only the empty, sterile longing that what has been done my be undone; bu we cannot rewrite our history, and Judas, unable either to rewrite or to bear what was written, shose the ultimate act of defiance of the Creator, repudiated the boon of life, and chose death instead…

Peter stands in sharp contrast to Judas: he too betrays his master, by denying him, but he goes out and weeps bitterly over what he has done, tearsnot of remorse but of true sorrow. His darkness is indeed creative, the sorrow giving him a deeper love, and the deeper love a great strength; so that in the end he becomes the Rock on which the Church stands immovable.

~Father Gerald Vann, OP (An English Dominican priest, lecturer and author, died in 1963)