By Francis X. Maier

Today in Holy Week is traditionally known as "Spy Wednesday." It recalls the day on which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin. The Gospel of John on Monday was especially harsh in its judgment of Judas. The scene is the house of Lazarus, where Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus' feet with costly perfumed oil. Judas is outraged:

Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples and the one who would betray him, said, "Why has this oil not been sold for three hundred days' wages and given to the poor?" He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.

The Gospel reading for today, from Matthew, paints an equally venal portrait of the man from Kerioth (thus his label "Iscariot"):

One of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" They paid him 30 pieces of silver, and from that time on, he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.

Later in the same reading, Jesus says "woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born." Judas piously asks, "Surely it is not I, Rabbi?" Jesus answers, with exquisite irony, "You have said so."

What to make of Judas?

The Church, like any human institution, is comprised of people. And each of those people, including ourselves, is a sinner, from plumber to pope, with the sin of greed high on the popularity list. The Vatican financial scandals of the last few decades are ugly and damaging, but they're hardly new to Church history.

Nor are they peculiar to Rome. In 2011, the chief financial officer of a major U.S. archdiocese was fired, indicted, and convicted for the theft of nearly $1 million in Church funds.

Similar examples, of various scale, abound because money is magnetic. Money means comfort. Money means power to do and get what we want. Thus it's quite reasonable to see Judas as just another miserable thief; a pathetic, deceitful - and in this case, disastrously misguided - crook. It would also be very unwise to ignore the guilty verdict of two Apostles with direct experience of the man and the Gospel events they describe.

Yet ordinary greed doesn't seem to satisfy as the main, or at least the only, motive for Judas's actions. In Franco Zeffirelli's 1977 film for television, Jesus of Nazareth, Judas - played with superb complexity by the actor Ian MacShane - is portrayed as a fellow traveler of the extremist Zealot party. The Zealots seek to expel the Romans from Israel and restore Jewish liberty. Judas sincerely admires Jesus and his mission.

He disagrees with the Zealots' appetite for violence, but he shares their assumption that a Messiah will restore Israel as an independent kingdom.

Judas joins Christ's disciples with genuine devotion. But his understanding of the Messiah's purpose is rebuffed by Jesus. Disillusioned and confused, he becomes an easy victim of Zerah (Ian Holm), the satanically shrewd counselor to the Sanhedrin, who convinces him to hand over Jesus to the authorities so that Jesus can prove who He is to the "fair-minded" Jewish leadership. When Judas realizes Zerah's treachery and its consequences, he commits suicide in a fit of hopeless self-loathing.

Mel Gibson takes a similar approach in his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. Whatever his other motives, Judas (Luca Lionello) becomes the naive pawn of a jealous and vindictive Sanhedrin. Horrified by what he's done, and contemptuously dismissed by his manipulators when he tries to undo the damage, he's hounded by demons of despair and hangs himself.

As with Zeffirelli, Gibson presents Judas not as a greedy, self-aware cynic but rather as a weak and deluded loser, a disposable tool of evil in a much larger game.

So the lessons of this and every Spy Wednesday are several, and worth considering.

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