Judas Was Not The Only Betrayer Series

Tuesday of Holy Week 2026

None of us, I suppose, has ever lived in a house without electricity for more than a few hours or days. Those would be periods of a weather emergency, or utility blackout. But in a place without utilities, lanterns and candles would be used to extend the period of work or relaxation into the times past sundown. The poor would go from room to room managing the lighting. The gentry would have servants to take care of that.

But the servant of the Lord described by Isaiah today actually becomes a light, not just for people Israel, but for the goy, the nations. Wherever this servant would be, darkness would flee, and salvation would enter. The power of God, the Lord, would accomplish this. Remember that the Son of Man and Son of God was named Yah-shua, the Lord-salvation. Note too that this man identified Himself as the Light of the world, and in the Book of Revelation He, as the Lamb of God, is also the Lamp of God shining 24 by 7 on the whole of the New Creation.

But, of course, first He had to suffer and die as the sacrificed Lamb, to make grace and forgiveness and Resurrection accessible to all humans for the glory of God. This had been his vocation already from His mother Mary’s womb. At the moment of His virginal conception, the angel named Him to be the salvation from the Lord.

The Church responds to this good news with Psalm 71, a hymn of deliverance that turns into a hymn of praise. We chant: “Upon thee I have leaned from my birth; thou art he who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of thee.” This week the psalm is so very appropriate on the lips of Jesus as He resolutely takes on the fallen angels of evil and goes to His death to conquer death forever.

John’s Gospel today takes us to the Last Supper in the Upper Room, where Jesus has just finished the servant action of washing His disciples’ feet. John forthrightly recalls that Jesus was “troubled in spirit” as He declared “amen, amen, one of you will betray me.” Jesus uses a morsel of Passover bread to offer a last chance for repentance to Judas Iscariot, who takes it. But then he turns himself over to Satan. Jesus, who goes to His death willingly the next hour, bids Judas to depart, and he goes out into the darkness.

But the Master knew that the Iscariot would not be the only betrayer. Jesus has set the whole plan in motion and interprets it for His disciples: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified; if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.” God will be glorified in the treason and abandonment. God would be glorified even in the betrayal of Christ’s number one apostle, and so He predicts Simon Peter’s triple denial, despite Peter’s protests.

As we prepare for the great Triduum, the three day festival of our liberation beginning on Thursday, we should mentally place ourselves in the Upper Room with Jesus and His followers, hear His words, taste His given-up Body and Blood, and determine to follow Him even to Calvary, even to renunciation of every earthly thing that attracts and holds us. And do it willingly, with praise of our God.