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By Rev. Larry Faraon
Judas was already of a different
breed, an ugly duckling among the swans who chose to remain ugly
until the end. While the other 11 apostles were Galileans, Judas was
from another area south of Judah, Kerioth. Iscariot is a contraction
of the Hebrew, “Ish Kerioth,” which means “a man from Kerioth,”
an old city identified with the Moabites of the Old Testament which
became a consistent enemy of the Israelites since “promise land”
times. That regional difference would eventually swell negatively
rather than gel positively with the other 11 as Judas would be
spurned by his own colleagues, particularly, John the Evangelist.
In today’s gospel, John
12:1-11, Judas saw as waste the perfumed oil that Mary of Bethany
was lavishly anointing Jesus’ feet with. And unmindfully, the
traitor quipped, “This perfume could have been sold for 300
denarii and turned over to the poor.” It is a noble idea indeed,
but not quite for John the beloved of Jesus, who quickly dismissed
Judas’ feigned love for the poor by saying, “Judas, indeed, had
no concern for the poor; he was a thief and as he held the common
purse, he used to help himself to the funds” (John).
John the Apostle must have fully
understood that not all those who are crying for the cause of the
poor are genuine. Of course, the way we love the poor must vary in
hundreds of ways depending on how we perceive the poor and their
poverty in our midst. The government sees them as flagship or banner
priority concerns of their administration’s program displayed in
power point presentations as statistics and data, while the business
czars see them as tax credits or discounts or exemptions facilitated
by the Foundations they put up for the purpose. The leftist
organizations would rank them in as bona fide socialists and rake
them to the front lines putting their lives and limbs in clear and
present danger to up their cause at the gates of Malacañang or Edsa,
while campaigning politicians salivate on their voting potentials.
Described by one Church cleric as “toothless, uneducated,
shabby” the poor are driven away like rats and cockroaches by some
agencies, private or government, using every physical and political
whip in demolitions and forced evacuations, and some, diabolically,
igniting fires in their slum dwellings.
But of course, the worse would be
the Judas perspective—thievery, greed for whatever funds that came
his way in the guise of concern for the poor. Unable to lay his
hands on the “wasted perfume on Jesus’ feet,” Judas would soon
settle for thirty pieces of silver to betray his own master. His
intentions in joining Jesus’ group were totally different from the
rest of his companions. He was indeed, predictable.
No, Judas is not a boy who cried
“wolf”; he is a wolf crying out “I love the poor,” whom
nobody believed anyway, especially his colleague John the Beloved.
Well, we still have these Judases very much around us today who are
actually wolves who claim they love the poor and worse, many of us
still believe them.
[Fr. Larry Faraon is radio
host of Sounds of the Soul, aired daily at 5:45 a.m. on 105.1 DWBM
Crossover and at www.crossover.com.ph. He is Presiding Keeper and
President of the New Covenant Catholic Community and Immaculate
Heart in Memoriam, Inc., respectively.]
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