First Week of Lent: Wednesday - Traditional Lenten Meditation

Practical Meditations For Every Day in the Year on the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ composed chiefly for the Use of Religious by a Father of the Society of Jesus. First translated from the French, 1868. Though primarily intended for Religious, the devout layman will find the Practical Meditations a most serviceable and bracing form of Spiritual Exercise amounting in fact to something like the daily practice of a Retreat.

FIRST WEEK OF LENT: WEDNESDAY
Treason of Judas

1st Prelude. Behold the traitor Judas giving Jesus a kiss.

2nd prelude. Beg from God a salutary fear, and a great distrust of yourself.


POINT I. "As He yet spake, behold Judas, one of the twelve, came and with him a great multitude with swords and clubs."

CONSIDERATION. We have today to meditate on a great and awful mystery of perversion. Judas, one of the twelve chosen disciples of Jesus, taught by Him for three years, confirmed in the Faith by so many miracles, loaded with favours, is become the tool of those who plot the death of the Lord. He has sold Him to them for thirty pieces of silver. He comes treacherously to deliver Him into their hands. Alas, such is the depth of blindness and perversity into which by degrees avarice has plunged Judas! We may, indeed, cry out with David -- taught by his own weakness: "What is man?" Quid est homo?

APPLICATION. Let the misery of another serve as a warning to you. See if there be not certain passions in you which have never been conquered, or which, after having been repressed, have little by little regained their former empire. There need not be many of these; one alone can suffice to overcome the virtue of him on which we thought we were fully able to rely. The history of the Church and of religious orders has recorded too many fallings-away and apostasies which were caused by a single ill-regulated passion not found out.

AFFECTIONS and RESOLUTIONS.


POINT II. "And forthwith coming to Jesus, he said, Hail, Rabbi; and he kissed him."

CONSIDERATION. What revolting hypocrisy! Under the appearance of the most respectful affection, Judas concealed the blackest perfidy. By a kiss he pointed out and delivered up his Divine Master to the fury of His enemies. Did he, then, believe that he could deceive God, as he had deceived men? Oh, how does passion blind its victims!

APPLICATION. There is no-one who does not detest the crime of Judas; but are there not Christians in our days who renew it by making a sacrilegious Communion? What are they doing in reality but delivering up Jesus as far as they can, under the cloak of piety, to the demons who are in their hearts? May God preserve us from such a crime! But there are acts of hypocrisy less revolting, but which we ought nevertheless to fear and detest, such as contenting ourselves with exterior virtue and piety; being more careful about regularity before superiors or brethren than when alone; alleging false pretexts to attain our ends; and other things of this kind. Is not this hypocrisy and dissimulation, and have we nothing to reproach ourselves with under this head?

AFFECTIONS and RESOLUTIONS.


POINT III. "And Jesus said to him, Friend, where unto art thou come?... Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?"

CONSIDERATION. Which is the more wonderful -- the goodness and ineffable sweetness of Jesus, or the hardness of heart of Judas? "My friend"; by giving that name to Judas, Jesus signified that He was still ready to pardon him. By asking him, "Where unto art thou come?" He wished to help him to look into himself, to recognise and abhor his crime. But Judas was untouched. Our Divine Lord made another effort to convert him: He showed him that He knew his treachery, and was horrified at it, by these words: "Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" But all was in vain; he remained obstinate.

APPLICATION. The extraordinary gentleness of Jesus ought to redouble our love for Him; and the inconceivable hardness of the traitor Judas should fill us with salutary fear, and an extreme distrust of ourselves, no matter how many years we have been in religion, or to what degree of virtue we believe we have attained. Let us ask that this may be the fruit of this meditation in the

COLLOQUY with our loving Saviour.