The betrayal of Christ part of God’s plan

AS we all know, Christ knew that he was going to be betrayed by one of his apostles but did not do anything to stop it or even just to avoid it. He went ahead with it because as he said, “I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.” (Jn 13,19) 

 In other words, the betrayal was part of God’s plan for the completion of Christ’s mission here on earth, that is, our own salvation. While what Judas did was definitely wrong, we, according to the late Pope Benedict XVI in one of his addresses about Judas in 2006, cannot and should not “judge his gesture, putting ourselves in the place of God, who is infinitely merciful and just.” 

 Pope Benedict continued by saying that the “negative role” of Judas was an occasion for “the total donation of the Son for the redemption of the world.” And from this observation, the late Pope drew a final lesson that can be learned. And that is that “if even in the Church there is no lack of unworthy and false Christians, it is up to each of us to counterbalance the evil they commit with our own clear witness of Jesus Christ.” 

 Thus, to be a clear witness of Jesus Christ, we should always play the role of being a servant and a messenger of God through Christ, just as Christ himself acted as a servant and messenger of his Father for our own good, for our own salvation. 

 That is why Christ repeated so many times that he who sees and listens to him sees and listens to God himself. And if we follow Christ to the point of becoming like him, then anyone who sees and listens to us sees and listens to Christ and to the Father. 

 We need to be more aware of this responsibility of ours to be like Christ in being a servant and messenger of his Father God who is also our Father. While we may enjoy some privileged positions in the world, we should never forget that we are meant to be a servant and a messenger insofar as our relationship with God through Christ is concerned. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to easily fall into pride, vanity and conceit whenever we enjoy special status in our life here on earth. We should strengthen and continue reinforcing our conviction that we are actually nothing without God and that we need to continually keep an intimate relationship with Christ in the Holy Spirit. 

 We have to make some readjustments in our understanding of being a servant and a messenger. It should not be pegged only on some worldly and temporal standards. Rather, it should be understood in the context of the role of Christ in our life, he who is the “way, truth and life” for us. 

 To be sure, understanding being a servant and messenger that way would never be regarded as some kind of downgrading our status. Rather, it would lead us to realize that we are achieving the fullness of our dignity as the “image and likeness” of God, children of his, meant to share in God’s very own life that is supernatural. 

 If this truth of our faith is clear in our mind, there is no doubt that we would be most eager to become servants and messengers of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit!

Our real identity

IT is Christ who tells us very clearly who we really are. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14,6) 

 Again, if we have to take these words of Christ in faith as we should, then there is no other conclusion we can make but to affirm that for us to get into the right way to know the truth about who we really are, and to have the life proper to us, we need to go to Christ who is our way, and to be with Christ for us to be in the truth about who we really are and to be Christ himself to turn that identity into a living reality. 

 Incredible things we being told and challenged with these words of Christ! But we just have to learn how to deal with them. We have our whole lifetime to pursue that goal and to grapple with that ideal. But what is more important is to realize that we have actually been given everything—all the means and instruments, etc.—so that we can achieve what God wants us to be. 

 The secret is, of course, always to live by faith, which in itself is already a big challenge. To deal with that reality, we have no other recourse but to humble ourselves, that is to say, to admit and to convince ourselves that we are nothing without God, that we are helpless without the guidance of faith. Without God and faith, the only thing possible for us is to take the path of error and sin. 

 For this, we can get some helpful ideas from one of the psalms which, as we know, are inspired words that express the proper spiritual and supernatural attitude and reaction we ought to have to anything that occurs in our life. 

 We have to study and meditate on the psalms well so that we can internalize their real meaning and imbibe the spirit behind the words. We have to know the psalms that are relevant to every act we do and every situation we can find ourselves in. 

 For example, Psalm 25 says: “Lord, make me know your ways, teach me your paths, make me walk in your truth and teach me.” This attitude and sentiment should always be with us, expressing and articulating it as explicitly as possible, since that is the proper attitude and sentiment to have. 

 The Psalm continues: “If anyone fears the Lord, he will show him the path he should choose.” If we are wondering how to choose the path proper for us, this psalm tells us to have that healthy fear of the Lord, a gift of the Holy Spirit, for only then can we be shown that path. We have to be wary of our tendency to take this duty to develop this healthy any holy fear of God for granted. 

 Still the psalm continues: “The Lord’s friendship is for those who revere him. To them he reveals his covenant.” There we are clearly given how we can develop, nourish and keep that necessary friendship with God. It is when we revere him. Do we really adore and worship him by praying and by converting everything that we do as a way to glorify him? 

 Let’s bring these considerations into our prayer and start coming out with plans, resolutions and strategies to bring what are suggested in this psalm into action, into life and reality itself!

How to know Christ’s voice

IN the gospel, there is an episode where Christ told some unbelieving Jews the reason they could not know who Christ really was. “How long are you going to keep us in suspense?” they asked. “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” (Jn 10,24) 

 And so, Christ had to tell them directly what was missing in them. “I told you and you do not believe,” he said. “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (Jn 10,25-27) 

 Lest we think there are some of us who do not belong to Christ’s sheepfold, we have to clarify that all of are meant to be among the sheep of Christ. The problem is that some of us, for one reason or another, choose not to be part of that sheepfold. And that can happen when in spite of everything that God through Christ in the Holy Spirit has shown, given and enabled us, we refuse to believe in him. 

 It’s a matter of whether we have faith or not, a faith that first of all is given to us by God himself but to which we have to correspond also. And that is where the problem lies. We often fail to do our part insofar as faith in Christ is concerned. 

 Many times, we just rely on what our senses and, at most, our intelligence can show us, as if they are the ultimate guide for us to know the truth of things in general, let alone, the truth about God, about Christ, etc. 

 We fail to realize that it is God who defines everything since he is first of all the Creator of all things. And even if we messed up his creation because of our sin, he has precisely sent us his Son who became man just to be with us and offer us “the way, the truth, and the life” that is proper to us. 

 The thing is for us to correspond to the faith God is sharing with us, we need to humble ourselves to be able to enter into the spiritual and supernatural character of this faith. We need to free ourselves from what practically can be considered as our enslavement to our human ways of knowing that rely simply on our senses and other human faculties. 

 We, of course, have to use these faculties, and in fact, we have to use them to the hilt. But they need to be guided always by faith. Without this guidance of faith, there is no way our senses and our other human faculties can capture the objective reality of God and of how everything else has to be seen, understood and used. 

 We have to be wary of our strong tendency to simply be guided by our human ways. Especially to those who appear to be quite gifted intellectually and in the other human faculties, the need to humble themselves would be great so that the workings of faith can be properly received and corresponded to. 

 This is how we can recognize the voice of Christ who is actually the pattern of our humanity and the savior of that humanity that has been damaged by our sin. Only with Christ can we see, understand and use things properly. Only with him can we be brought back to our original and ultimate dignity as children of God, his image and likeness, sharers of his divine life and nature!