Reflections for Holy Week 4: Spy Wednesday - The Mother of Judas Iscariot

 Wednesday: Judas’s mother

‘When Judas, [Jesus’s] betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ But [the Pharisees and Temple authorities] said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.’ After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.’’

[Matthew 27.3-10]

 

He was an angry baby, and an even angrier young man. Raging against the world even as he was being born. He never calmed down and continued to rage: he raged against the Jewish authorities who collaborated with Rome, and then at those who didn’t stand up to the occupiers. Yet me was my son, my own son. I never understood where that anger came from. I still don’t.

 

He got in with some bad folk. Iscari (dagger-men) they called themselves, assassins I think you’d know them as now – men who sought to get ride of the Romans through violcence. I assumed this Jesus was another bad sort like the rest, he took my son from me, though he had already been long lost truth be told. But he was still my son.

 

I’d heard all about Jesus of course. He seemed different, not interested in armed insurrection, but in peace and love. (I can’t imagine what my Judas saw in him, or what Jesus saw in Judas, like chalk and cheese they must have been.)

 

Now they have arrested Jesus, will be sentencing to death tomorrow, or so my friend has said. What will become of my Judas I wonder?!

 

…

 

It’s now Friday evening, and Jesus is dead as is my son. They crucified Jesus this afternoon, my son Judas hanged himself shortly after, he was found with a pocket filled with silver coins. A considerable amount, enough to buy a fiend they said.

 

Jesus’s mother sought me out – I’m not sure that she know the part my son played in Jesus’s arrest …

 

We’re sitting together, comforting one another. She said that John and Peter had told her not to come here, but that she’d said ‘how could she not!’ she said, we’d both lost sons. How could one mother not comfort another!! So we sit and comfort each other. It’s all we can do now, it’s all we have left.

 

-        Tradition has it that when Jesus harrows hell on Holy Saturday he first goes to the deepest part, there to seek out his friend Judas.