What Would the Sacred Heart of Jesus Do?
I always thought it was more or less open season on Judas. Look at the way that his fellow apostles talked about him:
• All four called him a betrayer
• Three of the four told about Judas delivering Jesus to the authorities sealed with a kiss.
• Luke called him a traitor; John mentioned that he was light-fingered with the donations.
• Both John and the physician say the devil made him do it.
• Matthew has Apostle Iscariot committing suicide in a fit of regret after tossing the money back into the temple
• Luke in Acts says Judas bought some land with his iniquitous earnings then fell, burst open, and literally spilled his guts.
I don’t recall one positive attribute mentioned for our Lord’s somewhat less than desirable apostolic draft pick. And to top it off, it appeared that Jesus Himself, who according to John early on hinted there was a rotten egg in the dozen, also declared the following in the gospel of St. Mark:
“For the Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” Mark 14:21 NABRE
Sounds suspiciously like a pre-condemnation of Judas bar Simon, one that indicates our anti-apostle would have been better off never having known life, liberty, or the pursuit of Jesus. In other words, no Judas is good Judas.
Then there’s that haunting counter-declaration from our Lord on the cross when in Luke 23:34 he says, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Could it be that this forgiveness was local rather than general? The second part of the same verse says, “They divided his garments by casting lots.” So, did “they” in the pardoning part refer to those “they” who were gambling for the Master’s humble wardrobe? If that was the case, why even mention it since it only exonerated the lackeys of the Governor and the ecclesiastic honchos who were pushing Pilate’s buttons?
Our Lord rarely acted or spoke without a spiritual scope that was boundless rather than limited. Doesn’t the word of the Word parse out as His Heavenly Father speaking through the Holy Spirit emanating from the Sacred Heart of His Son?
I suppose a writer who asks so many questions in his work is expected to answer them at some point during the literary wandering. Unfortunately, I seem to be long on the interrogatory and sparse on the declarative.
What if Jesus’ woe-saying in Mark was not a condemnation, but was really an expression of grief and heart-felt disappointment for one of His beloved, hand-picked followers? And suppose that the pronouncement of amnesty from His pierced position was not for the local gamesters, but for all involved, including us clueless, sin-soaked, well-meaning flawed pottery people whose transgressions nailed the heavenly Nazarene to the cross in the first place? Doesn’t that introduce the possibility that Judas was forgiven, and may have even accepted that mercy, thereby working out his own salvation in an excruciating and forever publicly humiliating process that we “lesser” sinners see in our well-meaning foolishness as eternal condemnation?
These kinds of questions give me both a headache and a sore soul. It’s one thing to forgive your betrayer, but to leave the gate of heaven open a crack where the offender might slip in is too much for my half-empty empathy. I want to draw the line somewhere on this forgiveness thing, as long as I’m on the right side of the line.
That’s why we call the spear-slitted Heart of Jesus “Sacred.” He gave His love, His self, His life and finally poured out blood for atonement and water to clean us up afterward. Shake all the synonyms out of the Thesaurus and none of the weary words can adequately describe what our God did when He spilled out His divinity on the earth to pay our debts. That is what the Sacred Heart of Jesus did, still does, and will continue to do, and why we need to magnify the gift by making His heart like unto ours.
Let’s then remember these questions and the uncomfortable but efficacious places they lead us as we celebrate the two hearts: Christ’s infinitely merciful and salvific ticker, and his Mama’s suffering and immaculate counterpart. May the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary beat as one with ours so that our spirit is made ready to return to its source, having emptied out all that was given freely and undeservedly to us from our loving God.
