{"id":18578,"date":"2014-04-17T10:43:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T14:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=18578"},"modified":"2014-04-17T10:43:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T14:43:29","slug":"on-the-night-when-he-was-betrayed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/04\/on-the-night-when-he-was-betrayed\/","title":{"rendered":"On the night when he was betrayed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

We commemorate quite a lot of things on Maundy Thursday.\u00a0 Jesus washed His disciple\u2019s feet, giving them\u2013and us\u2013the \u201cmandate\u201d\u00a0 (maundate<\/em>; hence, \u201cMaundy\u201d) to love one another.\u00a0 Then He gave them His body and His blood in bread and wine, thereby making clear the meaning of what was about to happen (\u201cthis is my body given for you\u201d; \u201cthis is my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins\u201d), ensuring that His followers would continue on as a Church (\u201cdo this in remembrance of me\u201d), establishing His continual presence with them (\u201cthis is my body. . .my blood), and instituting the means by which His followers are incorporated with Him and receive the promise of the Gospel (\u201cgiven for you\u201d).\u00a0 Later, Jesus prays for His Church, for His disciples and for those in the future who will believe because of their testimony\u2013that is to say, us.\u00a0\u00a0 Then Judas betrays Him, He is arrested, arraigned before Herod, and Peter denies Him.\u00a0 And the rest unfolds.<\/p>\n

\n

The events of Maundy Thursday are all for the benefit of His followers\u2013washing their feet, exhorting them to love each other, giving them His body and blood in an ongoing sacrament, praying for them\u2013whereupon one of those followers betrays Him, another denies Him, and the rest run away.<\/p>\n

Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> is not so much a travelogue of Hell as it is a symbolic exploration of the nature of sin.\u00a0 The first levels are the sins of \u201cincontinence,\u201d the vices of lust and wrath and other vices of the passions that come from the lack of self-control; lower down are the sins of \u201cviolence,\u201d in which sinners deliberately and cold-bloodedly harm their neighbors; but the lowest levels are the sins of \u201cmalice,\u201d transgressions against relationships, against love itself. \u00a0 It is damnably wrong to harm strangers, but it is even worse to harm those whom you know and those who care about you.\u00a0\u00a0 Harming your friends, the members of your family, those who care about you\u2013such transgressions are lower and more contemptible because they are greater violations of love itself.\u00a0 So Dante places these offenses progressively lower in his infernal geography, in which the punishments are symbols of the crimes.\u00a0\u00a0 The fires of Hell give way to a vast frozen lake, where those who betrayed those who loved them are encased in ice, symbolizing their cold, cold hearts.<\/p>\n

And at the very lowest level of Hell are those who betrayed their benefactors, who turned against someone who had done them great good.\u00a0 Here we find Satan, who betrayed his Creator.\u00a0 And here we find Judas, who betrayed Christ.\u00a0 (Dante, expressing his pro-Imperial political beliefs, also throws in Brutus and Cassius who betrayed Julius Caesar.)<\/p>\n

Betraying someone who has been so good to us\u2013who has loved us\u2013is the most inexplicable sin, and yet it is one of the most common.\u00a0 How horrible it is.\u00a0 How low.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And the way we turn against God in the other sins that we commit\u2013God, who has given us so many gifts, so many blessings, starting with our very existence\u2013surely is monstrous and surely makes us deserve to be in that frozen lake and worse.\u00a0 We all betray Christ, and for far less than 30 pieces of silver.<\/p>\n

And yet, Jesus died for the disciples who denied and abandoned Him\u2013then and now.\u00a0 Judas despaired and embraced death.\u00a0 But Peter was restored.\u00a0 And so are we.\u00a0 \u201cThis is my body given for you.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThis is my blood poured out for the remission of sins.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We commemorate quite a lot of things on Maundy Thursday.\u00a0 Jesus washed His disciple\u2019s feet, giving them\u2013and us\u2013the \u201cmandate\u201d\u00a0 (maundate; hence, \u201cMaundy\u201d) to love one another.\u00a0 Then He gave them His body and His blood in bread and wine, thereby making clear the meaning of what was about to happen (\u201cthis is my body given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,21,28],"tags":[3103,626,1407],"class_list":["post-18578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christ","category-church","category-holidays","category-literature","tag-betrayal","tag-dante","tag-maundy-thursday"],"yoast_head":"\nOn the night when he was betrayed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We commemorate quite a lot of things on Maundy Thursday.\u00a0 Jesus washed His disciple's feet, giving them--and us--the "mandate"\u00a0 (maundate; 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