A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. One of the 12, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went off to the chief priests and said to them, what are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you? They paid him 30 pieces of silver. And from that time on, Judas kept looking out for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to him. On the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, the disciples came up to Jesus and said to him, where do you want us to prepare the Passover supper for you?
Jesus said, go to this man in the city and say to him, the teacher says, my appointed time draws near. I am to celebrate the Passover with my disciples in your house. The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered and prepared the Passover meal. So there's no question that the last supper was a Passover meal, I think. When it grew dark, Jesus reclined a table with his 12 disciples.
And in the course of the meal, Jesus said to them, I give you my word. One of you is about to betray me. Distressed at this, they all began to say to Jesus one after the other, surely, it is not I, Lord. Jesus replied, the man who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will hand me over. The son of man is departing as scripture says of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed.
Better for him if he had never been born. Then Judas, his betrayer, spoke up. Surely, it is not I, rabbi. Jesus answered, it is you who have said it, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
This is the last day before we begin the solemn, the last three days of holy week. The thought I'd like to leave with you is expressed in the responsorial psalm, and it says, you who seek God, may your hearts be merry. May you who seek God, may your hearts be merry. Means with the the word, we scarcely use it anymore except for Merry Christmas. We don't know what that means because there's more sadness around at Christmas than there is merriment, I think.
But anyway, here's what the here's what the psalmist says. Those who seek God, may your hearts be merry, not downcast, not laboring in darkness and clouds of despond, not forlorn and faint and stark. You know, words from Newman. But you the we are to be merry in seeking god. That means you can't be merry if you lack trust.
By trust now, I don't mean faith. I mean confidence, The outgoing of our whole self. We surrender ourselves. Let go. Let god.
It's easy to say, but you'll never have the merriment of a Thomas More unless you know how to let go and let god. Now I never can use that word merry, m e r r y, without thinking of saint Thomas More. And that that man's life, the more you read about it, the more you get in actual contact with the man. He wasn't he wasn't perfect, believe me. He was he had all the the the weaknesses of the humanist including Erasmus and all the rest of it.
But the thing is, the more you come to know him in the reality of his life, the more you regard and respect him. And the more you can say, this is a man I hope to God I can be liked. I don't have any inclination to be a saint Peter Claver. I don't wanna be a saint Peter Claver or saint Francis of Assisi. There's nothing there well, I don't wanna say nothing, but I I don't I don't hold them up as somebody I'd wanna imitate.
But when you hold up Saint Thomas More, there's someone you can say, if I can be like him, I know I have it made. And this isn't because if somebody wrote a play about it recently, more or less recently. You know, Saint Thomas More wasn't always as popular as he is now. He was almost a forgotten man because he did not stand for some of the great principles that Henry VIII and his successor stood for. They were more than willing to have him forgotten.
Remember, he stood up against the divine right of kings. You don't want that kind of business around when you're trying to run a country by your own hands. But I've I've just read during the last few weeks the life of Saint Thomas More by Roper. Now Roper was his son-in-law, William Roper. He married Moore's daughter Margaret, May.
And it's it's the most authentic firsthand account we have of Moore. Read it three or four times. It's not a long thing. But the the man that comes through, his idea of the church remember, he lived before the council of Trent. He lost his head in 1535 just after John Fisher and the Carthusian monks.
And remember in the all of England, Fisher was the only bishop who refused to take the oath of supremacy and more than the Carthusian monks were almost alone in refusing to take that oath of supremacy, meaning that Henry the eighth was head of the church. Every single bishop of England took the oath except John Fisher, and yet it was more. He said, can't do it. I cannot do it. And there was no they remember there was no formal declaration at that time of the of the of the pope's supremacy.
So this man, it all comes back to that word marry. And as I've said, beginning with the sixteenth century and what we call the reformation, the protestant reformation, we lost that merriment, which was so much part of being a Christian. It disappeared almost at once. Of course, it it it reached its radar with the Puritans in England. But in the from the very beginning, when you have such theories of as as predestination with only the salvation of the elect, when you have a conception of a human being that almost wants to reject his body and the physical, that wants to treat him almost as a disembodied spirit and an intellect alone.
All of these things, they are inhuman. And so as we go into this season of Lent, it is not going in there with with a with as if we were going into a funeral parlor. We have a savior. We have been saved. Perfect past tense.
This is something, you know, we don't get ahold of. And and when we're sure of that, then our hearts can be merry. Let go. Let god. Because there can't be much merriment in a person's heart if all he can look at is the image of himself in a mirror.
If all we have to depend on is ourselves, it ain't much folks. There are times when we we feel strong because we are strong. There are times when we can dominate because we can dominate at at times. But the baby starts crawling on all fours, and if we live long enough, we wind up by crawling on all fours when we don't do much domination. And so as we head into this this last great period of Lent, it is not a period of despair.
Just think of this. Somehow of course, this matter of Judas always intrigues me. It's tremendous because remember, only one disciple was with Jesus on Calvary. Where were the rest of them? What did they do?
And when you come to Peter, I maintain I can make a very good case out of it. He was much worse than Judas because Judas is a very mysterious person. Why did he do this? What did he what did he hope to gain from it? Why did he betray Jesus?
Why did he you take the initiative and go to the to the leaders of the people and said, oh, look. Give me some money, and I'll hand him over to you. Why did he do that? I mean, he had some reasons. Just remember that there was only one disciple that stuck with Jesus, and even he left him for a while.
They all left him. Jesus was abandoned. The only people around him were those who were hollering out, crucify him. Let his blood be upon us and upon our children. So Judas wasn't alone in betraying Jesus Christ.
All the disciples left him in the garden, and only one was on Calvary by the cross and his blessed mother. So there's there's something there for us to realize. And the point that we realize, this is not a this is not a a this is not a fact for despair. This is a fact of that the way it was, that the foundation of the church was upon these weak human beings. Every all all but one abandoned their lord and master, which is what we do with by sin.
But remember, it was on them that Christ's church was built, not upon Judas. He was a suicide. He gave up. And if Judas if Judas is looked upon now as one who was probably lost for all we know, it wasn't because of his sin. It was because of his despair, his lack of merriment.
He did not know what it was to be merry in the lord. The name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.