Today is Spy Wednesday, the day in Holy Week when Judas went off to bargain with the priests about his terms for betraying Jesus. Tomorrow, Holy Thursday, the Gospels tell the story of the act, the sharing of the Last Supper and then going off to meet the police and identifying Jesus with a kiss. The Judas kiss.
He is the great betrayer, Judas Iscariot. But not the only great betrayer. The other one is Peter. Yes, that Peter, Prince of the Apostles and first Bishop of Rome, Keeper of the Keys. His betrayal was different but also devastating. Hiding in the crowd as Jesus was interrogated, his Galilean accent made the Jerusalem locals ask if he had a connection to the arrested men. He said no. And no again. And a third time, no. "I know not the man."
Then Jesus caught his eye when he was being transferred over to the Romans. The cock crowed. And Peter broke down.
And of all the apostles, only John came near the cross. Along with the rest of the men, Peter ran away and hid. No wonder.
Consciousness of betrayal produces shame. Not guilt, which is breaking a law or a custom or such. But shame, which is breaking your very right to exist. The powerful energy of shame produces a powerful desire to hide, to disappear, not to be seen, (Gen 3.10) by your own eyes in a mirror or by any eyes at all.
So Judas eventually returned the money, throwing it at the Temple while on his way to hang himself. Which he did. (Mt 27.3-10) Dante's Inferno put him in the deepest heart of Hell, the Ninth Circle, the place reserved for traitors, a place, strangely, of immobilizing arctic cold and unending silence. Satan chewed him up eternally in one of his three mouths.
But the other traitor was not only forgiven, --along with all the other cowardly apostles-- but sought out and elevated. A quite extravagant forgiveness. In the Paradiso, he is one of the brightest spheres in the highest heaven.
As much as I find the scriptural exhortations to forgiveness hard to take, this story moves me. This is not preachment, but act. The return of Jesus from the realm of Death to those who had abandoned him is as much a restoration of a broken trust as it is an assertion of divine power over mortality and tyranny.
Although tradition names one act as betrayal, the other as denial, the difference between Judas' and Peter's actions was not that strong. Indeed, Judas' role was a tragically necessary element in the unfolding of the story; Peter's, though predicted (Mt 26.34), was just his flawed character in action. But Judas did not leave open the possibility of his shame being forgiven. He was brave enough to kill himself, but not brave enough to let himself be seen alive for who he was. Peter, always emotional and often wrong-headed, whether through hope or cowardice or even lack of imagination, remained in place, so he was capable of being found and found out. And that made all the difference.
2 comments:
... So exactly what is Ex Cathedra's reason not to return to worshipping in the Catholic Christian Church? His sexual orientation only? Sc that he can accept that his betrayals etc are wrong and shoiuld be repented of and need forgiveness while he is alive, but that his sexuality isn't wrong?
But as Ex Cathedra well understands -- he explain'd it to me years ago in Toronto -- it is a recent (Freud-based) innovation for the Church to deem "homosexuals" "ontologically defective" etc. Prior to what Ex Cathedra may call the "puritanization" of the Church, Catholic Christians sin'd boldly, or rather sin'd not quite boldly, in their 'sexuality': those who took religious vows strove to annihilate their this-worldly sexuality in chastity (real chastity, chastity pros hen, as Aristotle would say; not "marital chastity" whatever that is) and everyone else was 'realistic' in terms of masturbation and every other failure of chastity, and routinely went to confession for absolution for sexuality that wasn't intentionally generative in this world.
Ex Cathedra accepts, he says, the dogmas of the Church. He may regret his attempting "religious life" (annihilating this-worldly sexuality in chastity), but he gives no reason for not attending mass. ... If he feels that it wouldn't be worth attending mass as it now is work'd because of the aftermath of the V2 Council (which surely can't be blamed on Oliver Cromwell and other Puritans), he could attend one of the Latin Novus Ordo parishes, couldn't he? ...
... I see that the president again (cf Candlemas prayer breakfast) spoke of his worship of Jesus, whom he praised for overcoming the world, as man and God (unity of the two natures "shirk'd" by Christian doctrine), whereas he, the president, only has trouble in this world (re John 16:33). ... If conservatives don't want this doctrine, they can't reasonably complain if it is taken up by the American president. More power to him, or I should say more dominion founded in grace to him!
... Christian dominion, you know, once gave and could give again higher political and religious concerns than the contemporary circus of health care funding, contraception funding, disproportionate underrepresentation, homogenous diversity, and OWS fail'd anarchism.
Nietzsche supposed that the niaseries of Victorian-Darwinian moralism would induce unendurable nausea, but pre-WW1 Europe seems Homeric Greece by comparison with our own era.
Post a Comment