Judas | Bishop Fulton Sheen

In the past few years in the church, we have had many psychological and sociological studies all attempting to explain why some priests have left their sacred calling. I presume they have some value, but it is interesting that none of them thought of making a biblical study of why priests leave. Perhaps we could find much if we peruse the Gospels and study Judas. His name was Iscariot, and no one knows exactly what that meant, maybe it was sicarios from the Greek or Sicarius, a dagger bearer, in this case, he would have been classified as a revolutionist bent on driving the Romans out of the Land of Israel. But in any case, one day, a baby was born, and the parents named him Iscariot. Friends brought gifts to the parents, and time went on, and that babe of Iscariot grew in age, and he met a babe who was born in Bethlehem, who had grown in age and grace and wisdom. At the parting of the waters, Christ chose Judas to be an apostle; He did not choose him to be a traitor but to be an apostle.

Almost all studies that have been made seriously of Judas say that the principal reason he left was because he was avaricious. There is indeed some gospel evidence for this, for just a week before the passion of our Blessed Lord, the Savior was invited into the house of Simon the Pharisee, and what the host saw brought a blush to his cheek. He looked up and saw a woman who was an intruder outside. Friends could come and stand along the wall and listen to a conversation at the table; this woman, however, annoyed him to some extent. He would not have minded it if anyone else had been there, but the rabbi, what would he think of it? She was a woman, a sinner; her hair was long, and she did not attempt to brush it back as she came toward the table. In those days, everyone reclined at the table on the left arm, leaving the right arm free to eat. She came and stood over the feet of our Blessed Lord and let fall upon those sandaled harbingers of peace a few tears like the first warm drops of summer rain. Then, ashamed of what she had done, she attempted to wipe the tears away with her hair. All the while, Simon was thinking within himself, "If he only knew what kind of devil woman this is!" How did he know? She took from about her neck a small vessel. In those days, women would carry precious perfume about the neck in a bottle. When they attended funeral rites, they would break the bottle over the remains and then, after allowing the perfume to fall upon the corpse, they would throw even the remains of the bottle onto the body.

She released from her neck this vessel of precious ointment but did not do what you and I would do - pour it out gently, drop by drop, as if to indicate by the slowness of our giving the generosity of our gift. She broke the vessel and gave everything, for love knows no limits. Judas all the while got a whiff of this perfume. Oscar Wilde describes a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He immediately fixed a price - 300 days' wages - for this perfume. Let me tell you, this perfume was no ordinary smell; Judas now becomes the defender of the social order and he picks up the routine of the dinner by saying, "Why wasn't this sold for three hundred pennies' worth and given to the poor? I can imagine that he probably went on and argued some such way as this: 'I heard you on the Mount of the Beatitudes say blessed are the poor. Where's your love for the poor now? Have you forgotten all of those fishermen's checks that are lying in the Sea of Galilee? Remember all of those huts that were hugging the highway between Jerusalem and Jericho? Are you mindful of those? Have you forgotten the inner city of Jerusalem, its slums where you love the poor?' The Lord answered, 'The poor you have always with you; me you have not always. And what this good woman has done was done for my burial, and it will be told about her around the world.' Here is another instance of an emphasis on social justice when there is a forgetfulness of individual justice."

A bishop one day came to me with a letter written by a priest in his office. It was two or three pages long, single-spaced, a very vicious attack upon the bishop because he had no interest in humanism and particularly because he had no concern for the poor. Well, I knew that the bishop did have concern for the poor and humanism as well. I said to him, "Why don't you find out how much he stole? Actually, he stole over $25,000 from the Chancery and then stole a wife who was the mother of four children." Because the story of Judas lived all over again, so the argument that Judas fell because he was avaricious does seem to have some substance, but does avarice really make a priest fall? As a matter of fact, in the history of the church, avaricious men have stayed in. Sometimes the church can be a comfortable haven for avarice. Furthermore, avarice is an old man's sin; the sin of youth is lust, middle-aged power, and old age avarice, for it is a kind of economic immortality. "See how well I have provided for myself." Judas was not an old man; avarice, therefore, cannot have been the cause of his leaving. What then was the cause?

Can you think of the first time that the fall of Judas is mentioned in the Gospels? The very first time? If you can recall that moment, then you will have the answer to why there is a break in the priesthood. Where is the first mention of the fall of Judas? The day our Lord announced the Eucharist. When did Judas leave? The night our Lord gave the Eucharist. He broke at the announcement of the Eucharist. As a matter of fact, that was the critical moment in the life of our Blessed Lord when he announced the Eucharist. He lost the masses because he refused to be a bread king. Secondly, he lost some of his disciples; they left him and walked no more. And finally, he split his apostolic band. And here is the end of the story of the announcement of the Eucharist, the conclusion of the sixth chapter of John: "And when the disciples withdrew and no longer went about with him, Jesus asked the twelve, 'Do you also want to leave me?' Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? Your words are the words of eternal life. We have faith and we know that you are the Holy One of God.' And Jesus answered, 'Have I not chosen you all twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.' He meant Judas, son of Simon Iscariot; he, it was, who would betray him, and he was one of the twelve. When do priests begin to break? When they lose their faith in the Eucharist. It's not seen; it has not commented upon, and the loss is generally long before others see the loss. There is a predictability about those who leave the priesthood, as is evident from the sixth chapter of John. Now, our Blessed Lord had to live with this man, Judas, for two years, yet think of it - He did not say who the devil was. He merely said, "One of you is a devil." John later on, of course, wrote the name.

Now you know why we have centered this retreat on the Eucharist. There has never yet been a priest who daily kept his faith in the Eucharist by watching an hour with the Lord who ever left Him, and no priest ever will. Those who were thinking of leaving, and I have many such letters in my possession from such men, have come back because they restored their faith in the Eucharist.

So, this is the beginning of the break, but they stay in. As I told you, Demas left; he went back to the world, as Paul simply put it. But others will destroy from within, as the young priest told me within six months after his ordination: "I was ordained to try to destroy the Church from within." If they would only leave, but they stay.

Now we come to the Last Supper, and Judas leaves the priesthood. The seating arrangement of the table was one in which certainly John sat at the right, and Judas sat at the left. Our Blessed Lord now washes the feet of His disciples. There are seven gestures mentioned, and this is the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of John.

Our Lord washes the feet during supper: "Jesus, well aware that the Father had entrusted everything to Him and that He had come from God and was going back to God." Now, get the picture of the Incarnation here. Our Lord rose from the table. If God the Son, now prepared for the Incarnation, laid aside His garments (the glory of His divinity), taking the towel (the mark of a servant, a slave), tying humanity about Himself (tying human nature to His divinity), He poured water into a basin (He poured out His blood), washed His disciples' feet (He cleansed us), wiped them with the towel (purification of the spirit). It is interesting to compare this passage with Philippians chapter 2, verse 6.

Then, our Lord asked them to watch and pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, telling them to watch for the external environment (their horizontal problem) and pray for their vertical attachment to heaven. They slept, and Judas came with a group of men to betray Jesus.

Judas found Jesus and kissed Him, and the arrest took place. Judas had thought that our Lord would run back into the olive grove, hiding in the dark, so he would have to flush Him out. That's why he gave Him a sign - a kiss. Our Lord, however, did not flee; instead, He confronted the crowd and asked whom they were seeking. After the arrest, Judas took the 30 pieces of silver, which is a small amount, and sent them rolling across the temple floor. They were used to buy a field of blood.

Judas could have repented and received pardon and forgiveness from the Lord, but he didn't. He was full of despair, and he ended up taking his own life. The specific details of his death are not known, but it is said that his bowels burst asunder, and he went to his own place. Everything has its own place, and Judas found his, never realizing the full depth of the forgiveness and redemption available to him.

The great tragedy of Judas, one of the twelve apostles, is that he might have been St. Judas, but he let his lack of faith in the Eucharist lead him to betray the Lord, and he fell into despair and darkness, never experiencing the true depth of God's love and forgiveness.