In today's gospel, Luke 9: 43b-45, Jesus says to his disciples and to us: "Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men." This same message appears in Matthew 26:21: "'It will be Passover, as you know, in two days' time, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.' Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and made plans to arrest Jesus by some trick and have him put to death." Judas, as you know, is part of this whole plot, negotiating with the chief priests and the elders to reveal Jesus to them. The trick? Judas will walk up to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and kiss him on the cheek, handing him "over to men" "to be crucified."
"Pay attention," Jesus says to his disciples, for the time has come when those who "were afraid of him because the people were carried away by his teaching" (Mark 11:18) and who perceived Him as "a political agitator" (Luke 22: 13) were about to overtake Him. It was Caiaphas who, at Jesus' arrest, suggested to the Jews that "[i]t is better for one man to die for the people" (John 18: 14) than all of the the people to die at the hands of an uprising against the Jews by the Roman occupiers.
"Pay attention!" There are "Judas'es" in our day, I believe, who are willing to destroy innocent persons and who have no conscience when it comes to having power and control over others. There are, I believe, people who are the "Caiaphas"of our time who feel threatened by men and women of integrity and will do anything to "rise" above them.
"Pay attention!" Are you, am I, a "Judas"? Are you, am I, a "Caiaphas"? Or are you, am I, a person of integrity, a person who is honest and true to the values of the Gospel, to Jesus' teachings?
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