Every year on Palm Sunday, we read, in the Catholic liturgy, one of the great Passion narratives from the Synoptic Gospels. This year, it is St. Matthew’s. There are a number of distinctive features in Matthew’s account, but the most distinctive and interesting, for me, is the evangelist’s treatment of Judas.
No other Gospel stresses the repentance and regret of the traitor more effectively. “Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply regretted what he had done. He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.'” This is not callous indifference or self-justification. This is a clear and honest admission of guilt.
Then we are told that Judas flung the money into the temple and “went off and hanged himself.” An awful ending to a sad life, the betrayer of Jesus falling into despair and committing self-slaughter. And this is why most figures in the great theological and spiritual tradition have assumed that Judas is in hell. Augustine thought so; Aquinas thought so; Dante depicted him perpetually chewed in the very mouth of Satan. And if his betrayal of the Lord wasn’t enough to earn him a place in hell, then his suicide, most theologians agreed, certainly sealed the deal.
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But I want to draw your attention to a counterview—admittedly in the minority—on display in one of the capitals on a column in the magnificent Vézelay Basilica in France.
On one side is a grossly vivid depiction of the hanging of Judas, eyes popping, tongue lolling out of his mouth. But on the other side is a depiction of the Good Shepherd carrying the body of Judas on his shoulders like the lost sheep. And the dead man appears to be smiling.
Pope Francis was so fond of this image that he had a reproduction of it over his desk in his papal office. It showed, for him, the hope that even Judas might have been saved by the overwhelming mercy of the Lord.
Now I know (please don’t send me letters of complaint) that we cannot embrace a simple-minded universalism, which says that we are perfectly confident that all people will be saved. We do indeed have to admit to the very real possibility of an eternal rejection of God. And yet St. Pope John Paul II insisted that the Church has never made a definitive statement regarding whether any particular person is in hell. And Pope Benedict said that we should suspend judgment in regard to Judas, committing him to the mercy and justice of God. But again, wouldn’t his suicide guarantee that he has gone to eternal perdition?
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Listen to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this point: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (2283).
The point is that God, in Christ, has gone to the very limits of God-forsakenness precisely to communicate the divine mercy even to that darkest place. When Jesus says from the cross, “God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” he signals that he has entered the condition of the most desperate sinner. He has not become a sinner, to be sure, but he has willingly embraced the psychological and spiritual state of the sinner.
I am not recommending that we go easy on sin or that we dismiss its awful seriousness. But I am indeed recommending what Paul said: “Where sin abounds, grace abounds the more.”
I am indeed insisting that God’s mercy is greater than any sin we could possibly commit, even the betrayal of Christ. So, do we despair of those who have taken their own lives? No. We pray for them and commend them to God’s mercy.
There is a story told about a French couple in the 19th century, she deeply religious, he vaguely agnostic. At one point in their marriage, the wife asked her husband if she could hang a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus over their bed. With little enthusiasm, but out of concern for her feelings, he agreed. In time, due to setbacks in his business and frustrations of his ambitions, the husband fell into a profound depression.
Finally, in desperation, he threw himself off a building and plunged to his death. His wife, utterly bereft and convinced of her own guilt in the matter, became disconsolate. At the end of her strength, she decided to speak to John Vianney, the famous priest of Ars, a man reputed to be a spiritual master and reader of souls. When she got to the small town near Lyon, she was shocked to see that the line of those seeking an audience with the great man stretched for a mile.
In anguish, she knelt at the communion rail and wept. To her utter surprise, she then heard a voice calling her name. It was John Vianney. “How did you know my name?” she asked. He answered, “It doesn’t matter.” He continued, “You are in despair over the death of your husband. I want you to understand that as he was hurtling to his death, God showed him that image of the Sacred Heart that he had hung over your bed.” “How could you possibly know such a thing?” she gasped. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “What matters is that upon seeing it, he repented.”
The same Dante who put Judas in the depths of hell also said that all God needs is a single tear of repentance to save a sinner.
What should we take from a prayerful reading of Matthew’s Passion narrative? God is mercy within mercy within mercy.
