WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK - SPY WEDNESDAY AND THE STORY OF JUDAS

 WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK

SPY WEDNESDAY AND THE STORY OF JUDAS
31st MARCH


Giotto, "The Kiss of Judas" Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy.
Today is traditionally called “Spy Wednesday” because Judas approached the chief priests with the intention to betray Christ on this day:
Matthew 26: 14-25:
One of the twelve, a man called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said: “What are you prepared to give me if I hand him over to you?”
They paid him thirty pieces of silver and from that moment he looked for an opportunity to betray him.
Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus to say: “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”
“Go to so-and-so in the city,” He said ‘ and say to him: “The Master says, ‘My time is near. It is at your house that I am keeping Passover with my disciples.’ “ The disciples did what Jesus had told them and prepared the Passover.
When evening came He was at table with the twelve disciples. And while they were eating He said: “I tell you solemnly, one of you is about to betray me.”
They were greatly distressed and started asking in turn, “Not I Lord, surely?”
He answered: “Someone who has dipped his hand into the dish with me will betray me. The Son of Man is going to his fate, as the scriptures he will, but alas for that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! Better for that man if he had never been born!”
Judas, who was about to betray him, asked in his turn: “Not I, Rabbi, surely?”
“They are your owns words”, answered Jesus.
Matthew 27: 2-11:
2. And they brought Him bound, and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate, the governor.
3. Then Judas, who betrayed Him, seeing that He was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients.
4. Saying: I have sinned in betraying innocent blood. But they said: What is that to us? Look thou to it.
5. And casting down the pieces of silver in the Temple, he departed and went and hanged himself with an halter.
6. But the chief priests having taken the pieces of silver, said: It is not lawful to put them into the corbona, because it is the price of blood.
7. And after they had consulted together, they brought with them the potter’s field, to be a burying place for strangers.
8. For this cause the field was called Halcedama, that is, the Field of Blood, even to this day.
9. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was prized, whom they prized of the children of Israel.
10. And they gave them unto the potter’s field as the Lord appointed to me.”




The park where it is believed Judas hanged himself.

The Guardian featured a painting of Judas kissing Jesus with the following commentary:
“A rare medieval panel showing Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Christ survived the Reformation due to a remarkable instance of 16th-century recycling, researchers in Cambridge have discovered.
The brightly painted wooden panel of The Kiss of Judas escaped the systematic destruction of thousands of church paintings because someone turned it around and used the back for another purpose – most likely to display the Ten Commandments.

This recycling, discovered by the Hamilton Kerr Institute, is also likely to have saved the panel from Puritan iconoclasts in the English civil war, who destroyed a lot of art that had survived the earlier purge.”

Some anonymous hero saved this beautiful painting for posterity.

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