Judas Receiving Communion?

[Lil Red]

+J.M.J.+
so, i just got my copy of [b]This Rock[/b] magazine today, and in their "Quick Questions" segment, there is this question:
[quote]Since Judas's betrayal of Jesus likely was a grave sin, why did Jesus give him Communion at the Last Supper? Or had Judas left the table by that point?"

Answer: If Judas did receive Communion - as Scripture appears to indicate (Luke 22:19-23) - then there may be any number of reasons why Christ allowed it even though he had already been plotting Christ's betrayal (Luke 22:3-4). Two possibilities include: Christ may have hoped that the grace of Communion ultimately could save Judas's soul. Judas did indeed feel remorse for what he did (Matthew 27:3-4), although he chose the wrong means to demonstrate that remorse (Matthew 27:5). Or perhaps Christ respected Judas's free will, just as he respects our free will, and so did not deny Judas Communion even though he apparently did not have faith that it was Christ's body and blood (John 6:66-71). - Michelle Arnold[/quote]

my question is, how does this apply to some Catholics' understanding of receiving the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin?

[Resurrexi]

Priests are only to deny those Communion who are in grave [b]public [/b]sin. Judas' sin would have been private at that point.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Resurrexi' post='1764783' date='Jan 28 2009, 03:19 PM']Priests are only to deny those Communion who are in grave [b]public [/b]sin. Judas' sin would have been private at that point.[/quote]

I don't think she means being denied Communion publically, she means how the faithful are not allowed to receive in mortal sin (that Confession is required first).

[[Edit.]]

I think that Judas was not yet in mortal sin, to be honest. He had the intent to turn Jesus over but had not yet done so. And since he felt remorse for selling Christ, I think he was well aware who Jesus was (so he most likely knew the bread and wine were Body and Blood).

Edited January 28, 2009 by HisChildForever

[Resurrexi]

Having the absolute intent of committing a mortal sin has the same gravity as committing the sin itself.

[CatherineM]

I agree he had the mes rea to commit the betrayal, but had not actually done so. It would be like a burglar stopping for communion on the way to blow a bank vault. If he has a wreck on the way, and then reconsiders, he hasn't yet committed the crime/sin.

Then the alternative question is, those who believe that Jesus actually used Judas to bring about his confrontation with authorities, did he in fact commit a sin? It's argued that Jesus' entire trip to Jerusalem was a confrontation. The entrance on the donkey, the turning over the tables in the temple, etc. Did Jesus need Judas to act as he did, and if so, was the commission of it a sin? Certainly his suicide was, but was that over guilt from his sin, or was it despair over the part he played?

Perhaps Jesus gave Judas communion because he didn't think what Judas was preparing to do was in fact a sin.

[Nihil Obstat]

Maybe Jesus was respecting Judas' free will to at any moment choose not to betray Him?

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1764815' date='Jan 28 2009, 03:47 PM']I agree he had the mes rea to commit the betrayal, but had not actually done so. It would be like a burglar stopping for communion on the way to blow a bank vault. If he has a wreck on the way, and then reconsiders, he hasn't yet committed the crime/sin.[/quote]

Yes. He is guilty of the sin of burglary if he has the desire to commit it.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Resurrexi' post='1764809' date='Jan 28 2009, 03:42 PM']Having the absolute intent of committing a mortal sin has the same gravity as committing the sin itself.[/quote]

You may have the intent but you still have a decision to make. You either commit the sin or you do not.
Once you commit the sin, it is done, you no longer have the decision as you have made it.

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1764820' date='Jan 28 2009, 03:52 PM']You may have the intent but you still have a decision to make. You either commit the sin or you do not.
Once you commit the sin, it is done, you no longer have the decision as you have made it.[/quote]

From the Catholic Encyclopedia article "Sin":

An efficacious desire, i.e. one that includes the deliberate intention to realize or gratify the desire, has the same malice, mortal or venial, as the action which it has in view. An inefficacious desire is one that carries a condition, in such a way that the will is prepared to perform the action in case the condition were verified. When the condition is such as to eliminate all sinfulness from the action, the desire involves no sin: e.g. I would gladly eat meat on Friday, if I had a dispensation; and in general this is the case whenever the action is forbidden by positive law only. When the action is contrary to natural law and yet is permissible in given circumstances or in a particular state of life, the desire, if it include those circumstances or that state as conditions, is not in itself sinful: e.g. I would kill so-and-so if I had to do it in self-defence. Usually, however, such desires are dangerous and therefore to be repressed. If, on the other hand, the condition does not remove the sinfulness of the action, the desire is also sinful. This is clearly the case where the action is intrinsically and absolutely evil, e.g. blasphemy: one cannot without committing sin, have the desire -- I would blaspheme God if it were not wrong; the condition is an impossible one and therefore does not affect the desire itself. The pleasure taken in a sinful thought (delectatio, gaudium) is, generally speaking, a sin of the same kind and gravity as the action which is thought of. Much, however, depends on the motive for which one thinks of sinful actions. The pleasure, e.g. which one may experience in studying the nature of murder or any other crime, in getting clear ideas on the subject, tracing its causes, determining the guilt etc., is not a sin; on the contrary, it is often both necessary and useful. The case is different of course where the pleasure means gratification in the sinful object or action itself. And it is evidently a sin when one boasts of his evil deeds, the more so because of the scandal that is given.

[HisChildForever]

So if an individual is experiencing temptation - and is getting lustful thoughts from this/desire to perform the act - but refrains from the action, they are still committing the sin? I thought that surviving temptation strengthen us, but am I now to believe that resisting temptation is of no value, since even if one has the desire to partake in sin, one has already committed it? How can one commit an action that has not yet come into existence?

[Resurrexi]

Impure thoughts and desires are only sinful if you willingly take pleasure in them or consent to them...

Edited January 28, 2009 by Resurrexi

[MithLuin]

It's more whether or not you set the plans in motion to accomplish it.

The difference between seeing a person and entertaining lustful thoughts...and checking into a hotel room with that person.

In the first step, you have not decided to do anything about it. You are in the midst of temptation, thinking, "what I'd really like to do right now is...."

But, if you don't take any steps to actually do that...you aren't really planning to sin. You could follow it up with, "...but it's wrong, so I won't." But if you say, "If that person offered, I would [i]so[/i] give into temptation..." then you are guilty, because you have decided in favor of the sin, and only their not giving you the time of day prevented you from actually falling into committing the sin.

Jesus spoke of lustful looks being "adultery in the heart," because our heart has decided and claimed something sinful...even if the body doesn't follow through with it because of circumstances.




As far as Judas at the Last Supper goes....he left early. That should give everyone who leaves mass right after communion pause .

Judas had already planned to betray Jesus, and was merely looking for an opportunity to do so. But then, Jesus knew Peter would deny him, too, and that didn't stop him from giving Peter communion either (even if Peter was hardly 'planning' to betray Jesus at this point). I am sure Jesus had his reasons for doing so, but at the same time, I wouldn't take that as an invitation to receive communion while guilty of mortal sin.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='MithLuin' post='1764845' date='Jan 28 2009, 03:38 PM']As far as Judas at the Last Supper goes....he left early. That should give everyone who leaves mass right after communion pause .[/quote]

Good point.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='MithLuin' post='1764845' date='Jan 28 2009, 04:38 PM']As far as Judas at the Last Supper goes....he left early. That should give everyone who leaves mass right after communion pause .[/quote]

ROFL.

[tinytherese]

There's this one catholic film critic who writes movie reviews online and also answers questions that people have regarding the films that he critiques. In this one question, a reviewer inquires about Judas in [i]The Last Temptation of Christ.[/i] I thought that the response to this was very interesting and apologetic regarding the church's stance on the whole "Gospel of Judas" hype going on.


Thought that it would be interesting.


Re: The Last Temptation of Christ (1989)
I’m fascinated by your interpretation of the Last Temptation of Christ. Whilst recognising the sometimes blasphemous nature of the film, I can’t help but think you are somewhat wrong about Judas.

The betrayal of Christ is a necessity and was known to Jesus in advance. Judas may have been ostensibly motivated by money. However, his actions are crucial and therefore must in some way have had the tacit approval of Christ.

The crucifixion was not possible without Judas and while it may have hurt Christ to be betrayed, it was — as I said — necessary. Does that not leave you — like me — with some doubt about Judas and his real motivations?

I’m bemused and gratified by the interest in my Last Temptation essay thanks to Roger Ebert’s attention. That essay came fairly early in my career, and was written primarily for myself as an exercise in the approach to film writing that I wanted to take. Looking back, there are a few things I would change, but I think the piece still basically sums up my take on the film.

The question of Judas’s motivation, whether considered historically, narratively or theologically, is admittedly a thorny one. Certainly thirty pieces of silver was not exactly a fortune, so it seems unlikely that Judas was nothing more than an opportunist motivated by greed. For that matter, I’m sure greed-motivated opportunists had better career options in first-century Israel than becoming itinerant disciples of homeless prophets.

The New Testament offers very little information about Judas Iscariot. The Gospels do tell us that he approached the chief priests and asked what they would give him to betray them, and the price of thirty pieces of silver (so Matthew tells us) is set beforehand. (This is contradicted by the depiction in Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, in which Judas never asks for money and a fictional “Zerah” offers him the money only after the fact, as an afterthought.) We also read that Judas felt remorse when he saw Jesus condemned, leading to his suicide.

Outside the passion narrative, Judas figures in only one story, the Johannine account in which Judas criticizes Mary of Bethany for anointing Jesus’ feet with costly ointment, which (Judas objected) could have been sold and the money given to the poor — and the evangelist adds that Judas’ real motivation was not that he cared about the poor, but that he was a thief who held the disciples’ common money box and stole from it.

This is obviously not a flattering picture, but neither is it enough data to build up any sort of psychological profile of Judas, or to say what he thought he was doing when he betrayed Jesus. From a dramatic point of view, therefore, I’m open to a wide range of speculative possibilities. Interesting 20th-century takes on Judas include Taylor Caldwell’s I, Judas and Dorothy Sayers’s The Man Born to be King.

However, the Gospels do offer two significant theological interpretations of Judas’s actions. First, Luke’s Gospel tells us that “Satan entered into Judas,” and it was then that he went to the chief priests to negotiate Jesus betrayal (Luke 22:3-6). That still doesn’t tell us what Judas thought he was doing, but we are told that it was Satan’s prompting, not God’s, that set him on that course.

Also, in Mark’s Gospel, after predicting his betrayal by one of the twelve, Jesus adds, “For the Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” This is often thought to be one of the strongest indication in all of scripture of the perdition of any particular person. It is hard to explain why Jesus would say “It would be better if he had not been born” if Judas had not by his actions completely rejected God.

The traditional, orthodox Christian interpretation of the role of Judas in Jesus’ passion is this: Judas’ actions were sinful and wrong, but God used his rebellion to accomplish His own ends, as He works in all things for the good, from the sin of Adam and Eve to Pharaoh’s hardness of heart regarding the Hebrews to the invading armies of the Assyrians and Babylonians. Just because Judas’ actions led to our redemption does not mean God approved of what he did. Presumably, had he repented beforehand and refused to betray Jesus, God could have found another way to deliver Jesus to His enemies.

The significance of the portrayal of Judas in Last Temptation seems to me to rest in part on the development of the figure of Judas in post-New Testament tradition.

On the one hand, orthodox Christian tradition increasingly demonized Judas to ever more grotesque degrees. For example, Papias in the second century describes Judas’s repulsive obesity, and Dante’s Inferno depicts Judas as history’s single greatest sinner and the damned soul in the lowest, most central, most abysmal circle of hell, forever chewed in the front mouth of Satan himself.

On the other hand, Gnostic tradition apparently began the exoneration of Judas in the second century with the so-called “Gospel of Judas.” This text has been thought to depict Jesus and Judas as Gnostic illuminati who arrange Jesus’ “betrayal” beforehand, though this interpretation has apparently been challenged.

At any rate, the heroic, prophetic depiction of Judas as a guiding voice in Jesus’ mission seems to me to evoke the same sort of subversive approach to the canonical account. Our age is skeptical not only of authority, but of traditional notions of right and wrong. Archetypal figures of evil, from the Wicked Witch of the West to Lucifer himself, are similarly reinterpreted as misunderstood or misrepresented by the dominant paradigm, rather than truly evil (cf. Wicked, His Dark Materials). The exoneration of Judas seems to me of a piece with this subversion of the traditional iconography of good and evil.

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