Tuesday of Holy Week

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus dips a piece of bread in the main dish and gives it to Judas. In the culture of the time to take a morsel of food and dip it into sauce and hand it to a guest would have been considered a gesture of honour and affection. Jesus had already washed the feet of the disciples, including the feet of Judas. He now offers Judas a final gesture of affection. As the evangelist stated earlier, Jesus loved his own to the end, including Judas. Yet, even divine love, present in Jesus, is powerless before the human refusal to receive such love. According to the gospel reading, when Judas received the bread, Satan entered him. He left the company of Jesus, God’s light in the world, and went out into the night.  Jesus could not prevent Judas from betraying him, and, yet, Judas’ betrayal came to serve God’s purpose for the world. God worked powerfully through the betrayal and the resulting death of Jesus to reveal his love for the world. God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, even when that giving meant the death by crucifixion of his Son. The Lord may be powerless before human resistance to his self-emptying love, but he can work in a life-giving way for all, even in and through the human refusal to receive his love. Jesus reveals a God who does not desire death but who can bring new life out of death. There is much death at the moment resulting from the war in Ukraine and the Middle East; such death is the consequence of some people’s refusal to receive the Lord’s love into their lives so as to share it with others. We are witnessing a terrible tragedy, but the events of this holy week allow us to trust that God is at work through good people bringing light into this darkness and bringing forth new life out of this death.