Mt 26,14-25 – Wednesday of Holy Week
The gesture of Judas, who sells Jesus, is not as far from our experience as we might think. It recurs every time we use others according to our own interest. Every time we make someone exist only as a function of profit and not within the gratuitousness of love. In this sense, Judas’ mentality is more everyday and familiar than we imagine.
Using others is, after all, a way to “sell” them: it means reducing them to objects, to tools, to means for our purposes. It is exactly the opposite of love, which instead recognizes a value in itself in the other. Jesus, during the Last Supper, clearly says that you can share everything, even the same bread, and betray at the same time. This makes the betrayal even more dramatic: it does not arise from distance, but from proximity. In Matthew’s story, then, Jesus takes the truth of this gesture to its core: “It would be better for that man if he had never been born!”. It is a strong word, which should not be read as a definitive condemnation, but as the revelation of gravity of a life lived without love. Because what kind of life is there in which one does not love, but uses one? The Gospel, however, does not limit itself to pointing us to Judas. It involves us directly.
We too are called to make the disciples’ question our own: “Is it I, Lord?”. It is a sincere question, which opens up to conversion. It is not used to accuse us, but to make us true. To recognize where, even in our lives, we risk replacing love with interest, relationships with utility. And precisely from this awareness an authentic prayer can arise: ask the Lord to convert us, to free us from everything that leads us to use others, and to teach us to truly love. Because only love makes life full and true. The rest is always Judas and its consequences.
