Spy Wednesday

 Today is often called Spy Wednesday. This is because, right after Our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the Sanhedrin gathered together and plotted to kill Jesus, even before the feast of Passover. They needed someone on the inside, like the spy Aldrich Ames, to inform the Jewish Leaders when would be the best time to strike…and this inside agent would be Christ’s betrayer. 

  
On the Wednesday before his death, Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper. As they sat at the supper table, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed Jesus' head and feet with costly oil of spikenard.

“Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him, said: Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things that were put therein.

Jesus therefore said: Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of my burial. For the poor you have always with you; but me you have not always.” John 12:1-8 1

Jesus pointed out something our own lawmakers often forget, There will always be poor…. From this moment on, Judas was looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.Then Judas went to the Sanhedrin and offered to deliver Jesus to them in exchange for money. 

Today and during the Sacred Triduum tomorrow, In the public recitation of the Divine Office (The Liturgy of the Hours) the Matins and Lauds are often sung in a haunting service known as the Tenebrae ("tenebrae" meaning "darkness"), which is basically a funeral service for Jesus. During these prayer services, one by one, the candles are extinguished in the Church, leaving the congregation in total darkness, and in a silence that is punctuated by the strepitus, a loud crashing noise, meant to evoke the convulsion of nature at the death of Christ. It has also been described as the sound of the tomb door closing. 

On a lighter note; legend says that the tree upon which Judas

hanged himself was the Cercis siliquastrum -- a tree that is now known as the "Judas Tree." It is a beautiful tree, native to the Mediterranean region, with brilliant deep pink flowers in the spring -- flowers that are said to be blushing in shame over what Judas had done.