People have wondered what motivated Judas to betray Jesus for almost two millennium. There has been much speculation, from scholars and lay people alike, but it has been just that: speculation. However, we do know of two things in Judas’s life that must have played a role in what he later became.

St. John wrote that Judas, who was the apostolic band’s chief financial officer, used to help himself to what was in the treasury. I doubt that Judas thought of himself as stealing. He probably told himself that it was just for a day or so but, somehow, he never managed to pay back the money.  Perhaps the first time he helped himself to the petty cash he was in a tight spot; he owed taxes, or something of the sort. He took a little money, meaning to pay it back in a day or two. He wasn’t trying to be secretive, at least that is what he told himself; it was just too small a thing to mention. 

But, of course, something happened, he wasn’t able to pay back the money, and he felt uncomfortable mentioning it to the Lord. The next time was a little easier. Still, he intended to pay it back—all of it.  He wasn’t stealing; it wasn’t like that.  But he never did get around to paying back the account and, after a while, it became clear that he never would.

He must have trembled when he heard Jesus tell a story, which St. Luke informs us he told his disciples rather than the crowds, about a manager who misused his Master’s money. One can almost see Judas turn pale as he listened to the story. Did Jesus know? Was he going to audit the funds and uncover Judas’ crime?

That was the first thing: taking money without asking. The second was the increasing ease with which Judas played the hypocrite. Surely, he had kissed Jesus – the customary greeting in that culture – and called him “Rabbi” many times prior to the night of his betrayal. How long ago, one must wonder, had his love for Jesus grown cold?

A short time before the betrayal, a woman spent an entire and very expensive bottle of ointment in anointing Jesus. The gospels tell us that a number of the disciples complained that it was wasteful. The ointment should have been sold and the money spent on the poor, they argued. St. John tells us that it was Judas who started that kind of talk, and not because he cared about the poor, but because he had been taking money out of the treasury. It was after Jesus rebuked him that he made the choice to betray Jesus.

The combination of a wrong hidden and repeated, and a hypocrisy growing ever larger, placed Judas on the evil path that brought him to betray his friend and leader. His sin – it needn’t have been stealing; it could have been adultery or lying or any one of a thousand other wrongs – and especially his dishonesty, prepared him to do the unthinkable.

Should we feel sorry for Judas?  Perhaps, but there are other lessons for us here. Bury a sin in your heart, hide it from the sight of others, add rationalizations to fertilize it, then irrigate it with the sweet water of blaming others, and it will sprout up like Jack’s beanstalk; only rather than growing up to the heavens it will grow down into hell.

Among the long list of traitors the world has seen, Judas ranks first. The acts of treachery by Alcibiades, Brutus, Cassius, Benedict Arnold, Alger Hiss, the Rosenburgs, and Aldrich Ames all pale in comparison to what Judas did. Yet God took this most monstrous act of betrayal and used it to bring about the greatest good humanity has ever known.

People sometimes say that Judas had to betray Jesus; it was predestined. That is the wrong way to look at it. What Judas did was Judas’s doing, not God’s. But what God did turned history’s most appalling betrayal on its head, transforming it into humanity’s most glorious blessing. That is how good he is at being God.