Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

After the Len­ten peri­od, here comes the Palm Sunday that marks the begin­ning of the holy week. I wish to focus my reflec­tion on Judas Iscari­ot who betrayed Jesus. Jesus called him but he had anoth­er plan. In the same way many claim God called them but they have anoth­er plan. Our world is still filled with series of betray­als and counter betray­als. By the way, was it only Judas Iscari­ot that betrayed Jesus? Fol­low­ing the Gos­pel account, espe­cially the Markan account, we have just listened to, the fol­low­ing were act­ively and con­vin­cingly involved in the betray­al of Jesus:

The costly price of betrayal

“When Judas, his betray­er, saw that Jesus was con­demned, he repen­ted and brought back the thirty pieces of sil­ver to the chief priests and the eld­ers say­ing I have sinned by betray­ing inno­cent blood. But they 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” (Matt 27:3–5). The res­ult of Judas Iscariot’s betray­al is not neces­sar­ily the death of Jesus, but the ugly and piti­able end of the betray­er him­self. As Paul said, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eager­ness to be rich, many have done so many bad things, wandered away from the faith and pierced them­selves with many pains (cf. 1Tim 6:10). Due to his love of money, Judas Iscari­ot wandered away from his faith, com­prom­ised his role a dis­ciple. Such beha­viour brought him sor­row which even­tu­ally caused him his life. As explained above, betray­al means

Conclusion – The Judas Iscariot in us

There are likes of Judas Iscari­ot every­where. You have them among broth­ers and sis­ters, hus­bands and wives, rela­tions, friends; politi­cians; among the ordained class and the reli­gious insti­tu­tions, and in the churches. Like the algorithms of the anti­vir­us, they keep col­lect­ing inform­a­tion (wrong and fals­i­fied inform­a­tion) about oth­ers send­ing them to those who have paid them, those who have giv­en them some­thing or those who have prom­ised them one thing or the oth­er. Greedy and god­less indi­vidu­als! Judas Iscari­ot was prom­ised money by the chief priests, the scribes and the eld­ers. You, who betray your broth­er, sis­ter, friend, neigh­bour, how much have you been paid to do that? What have you been giv­en or prom­ised? Who paid you? And who has made such irres­ist­ible gift or prom­ise to you? Due to greed, neg­at­ive jeal­ousy, insec­ur­ity, inferi­or­ity com­plex, the quest to impress oth­ers, arrog­ance, pride,

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the Pas­sion Sunday of Lent (B) is found in vols. I (pages 202–224) and II (pages 160–163). Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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