NOTES for Luk 19:29-40; Luk 22:7-39

The Mount of Olives is the beginning of Christ's glorification. It is His Entry into Jerusalem, the entry of the King. And He returns to the same mountain after He has eaten the Passover with the disciples. And again from the Mount of Olives begins Christ's glorification, now as Savior of the World.

And at the Passover meal Christ explains to the apostles what He Himself had been doing and what is being accomplished. He is the One who serves, and beside Him were people whose hearts had already changed. People to whom He promises a meal in the Kingdom of Heaven. And to whom, as witnesses of His deeds, He bequeaths the Communion of His Body and Blood. Communion in His death and imminent Resurrection. Communion in the glory of Christ, through which all Christians have been strengthened and saved from those days onward.

Why do the Pharisees ask Jesus to make His disciples be silent when they were glorifying Him as the Messiah? Was it only out of fear of possible political consequences? Of course, they could have feared excesses, or even outright revolt, although in a certain sense the time for that had already been missed. Still, anything at all could be expected from the Jerusalem crowd, and the Romans, who tolerated no disturbances in the city, were always ready to intervene, and their intervention always ended in bloodshed. But the matter was not only these fears. The matter was also that, in the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus was the "wrong" Messiah, one completely inconsistent with their ideas and concepts. They were, of course, waiting for the Messiah, but not for one like this. And this one did everything differently from what they expected. At first He refused to provide them with the proofs of His messiahship that they expected; then He avoided the opportunity to head a mass popular movement, though such an opportunity presented itself to Him several times. But now He, it seems, speaks directly about His messiahship, yet again not in the way a "real" Messiah should have done it. After all, a real Messiah cannot ride into the city mounted on a donkey, can he?! This is no longer even a parable; it is a real profanation of the triumphant entry into the city of the Messiah-victor, the Messiah who drives out the Romans, the Messiah who establishes His Kingdom, the Messiah who will rule with a strong hand in the name of God... And suddenly, instead of the expected triumph, there is some half-solemn, half-buffoonish procession, recalling the entrance into the city of a "king" chosen from slaves during the Roman Saturnalia... There was reason to be confused. It is no wonder that the Pharisees, as deeply religious people, began asking Jesus to stop what seemed to them an inappropriate and unworthy comedy. And Jesus answered them that everything was serious. So serious that it was even hard for them to imagine it. Only the events would unfold differently from what they expected.

The Mount of Olives is the beginning of Christ's glorification. It is His Entry into Jerusalem, the entry of the King. And He returns to the same mountain after He has eaten the Passover with the disciples. And again from the Mount of Olives begins Christ's glorification, now as Savior of the World.

And at the Passover meal Christ explains to the apostles what He Himself had been doing and what is being accomplished. He is the One who serves, and beside Him were people whose hearts had already changed. People to whom He promises a meal in the Kingdom of Heaven. And to whom, as witnesses of His deeds, He bequeaths the Communion of His Body and Blood. Communion in His death and imminent Resurrection. Communion in the glory of Christ, through which all Christians have been strengthened and saved from those days onward.

Most often, the mystery of Christmas is connected for us with a pleasant festive mood. In general, news of the birth of a child in the family of acquaintances, people not too close to us, is usually accompanied by a feeling of tenderness and joy. But the birth of a child in one's own family is often connected with anxious, and not always positive, expectation: we do not know for certain how the child is spending those nine months, whether he is healthy, whether everything is normal, how the birth will go, or whether the doctors will let us down. And with the birth of a child, our anxiety and worry do not weaken; on the contrary, they grow day by day. Our children make us feel the breath of death always and everywhere.

The celebration of Christmas leads to the realization of an equally terrifying fact: God came into the world to give us the Kingdom, but this Kingdom, which He possesses, can be handed over to us only through a testament. We refused the possibility of living in the Kingdom, choosing not life and good, but death and evil. And then He was born, became tiny and defenseless, entrusting Himself to human beings completely and without reserve. He was born into the world, and that means He takes upon Himself the whole weight of death. He wants to bring us into the Kingdom, and one path remained for Him: to bequeath to us what belongs to Him.

The day has come of which the prophets of Israel spoke with fear: God has visited His people. From deepest antiquity people waited for this coming of God and placed all their hopes on it. Not only Israel, but many other peoples at the beginning of the first century of our era expected the appearance of someone who would bring them peace and open the way to life. To some degree even we, after two thousand years, have inherited this expectation and hope for God's visitation. The prophets proclaimed that the sun would be darkened on that day and all creation would change, sin would cease, and people would be redeemed from death. "Oh, that You would tear the heavens and come down!" exclaimed the author of the second part of the book of Isaiah. "The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills", as the Song of Songs presents this day as a happy meeting of lovers.

And now He comes. A multitude of disciples, perhaps several hundred people, praise the great works of God and bless His coming. But right there, among the distrustful crowd, there are those who consider it necessary only to reproach Him for immodesty: "Forbid Your disciples to praise God and You!". And almost no one thinks about what He called for many times through the prophets: "Amend your evil ways, so that you do not perish on that day." Only His Most Pure Mother and close disciples are given to feel His sorrow. He comes, and even on this day we do not know that to meet Him we must stop doing evil and learn to do good. How should we meet Him, and by what can we deserve His favor? What should we do so that He will bless us and help us? "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live," He said through His messengers. But we think that we must perform certain rites and arrange splendid celebrations. As if this would serve for our peace and give us peace in this meeting with Jesus.

If He does not enter Jerusalem today, we will not be able to become partakers of His Body and Blood. If He does not give Himself up for us, we will remain prisoners of death. But His chosen ones do not recognize the time of visitation; they do not recognize that the expected and foretold day has come. And therefore Jesus weeps. Recently the Lord spoke in one of the passages about what His disciples should rejoice in. Today we understand what we need to fear: failing to recognize the time of visitation.

It is no secret that the Saviour's words about Jerusalem's coming destruction gave rise, in Christian historiography and philosophy of history, to much speculation about the Jewish people's guilt and historical responsibility for the Saviour's execution, of which they were supposedly guilty. This, it was claimed, was why they were punished with the loss of their statehood, the loss of the Temple and even, for a considerable time, the possibility of living in Judea. Yet such a view seems superficial at the very least, and its conclusions hasty. In any case, the Saviour accuses no one: He only weeps over His people and Jerusalem.

In the coming tragedy of Jerusalem and the Jewish people, He sees neither punishment nor God's vengeance, but a crucial opportunity, vital to the people, which they have missed. This is not surprising. The earliest Church was Jewish-Christian even in its, so to speak, pagan part, which was not wholly alien to the Jewish-Christian tradition. If only because the overwhelming majority of pagans entering the Church at that time were pagan only in the sense that they had not accepted Judaism in its entirety.

Their spiritual life, however, was wholly bound up with the Synagogue, through which they learned of the coming of the Messiah so many of them awaited. Nor, as we know, was there anything like unanimity among the Jewish people themselves in their judgement of the Saviour and His activity. But these differences were largely levelled out after the catastrophe of AD 70, when the city and the Temple were destroyed—the catastrophe of which Jesus had warned. Jesus Himself, meanwhile, understood perfectly what was being decided when He entered Jerusalem, what then hung in God's balance. Of course He knew that there is one people of God and no other: He wished to grow His Church within God's people, and He did so. The Church remained part of the Yahwistic community until AD 70.

Later the paths of Synagogue and Church diverged, inevitably, though they would cross again more than once. But the Saviour of course understands perfectly: God's people are one, and can be saved only as a single spiritual whole. He weeps because He sees His people's paths becoming distorted before His eyes, leading to catastrophe not only those who reject Him in their search for heroes and leaders to their liking, but also those who accept Him. For they too—who will sometimes laugh with malicious delight at what He now weeps over—will lose a great deal, condemning themselves in the future to rivers of blood far exceeding the bloodshed of AD 70.

For the Saviour, AD 70 is neither punishment nor vengeance. It is another scar across the body of His people, one that will inevitably also run across His own body, His Church. Many of its members will think that what happened then, at the dawn of Christian history, has nothing to do with them. Members of His body who will find it very hard to understand whose body they are tearing apart when they laugh at what made the Saviour weep.

The people of Judea greet Jesus as He enters Jerusalem as the King who comes in the name of the Lord. This is true, but not at all in the sense that those greeting Him attach to these words: the Kingdom He is coming to establish is unlike any earthly kingdom. For now, Jesus has influence comparable to the authority of the people’s leaders. He can put the Temple in order, and no one can hinder Him because the people listen to Him without ceasing. Unfortunately, though they listened, not all of them heard Him. That is why tears are in His eyes at the very height of the celebration: even those who place their hope in Him seek an entirely different salvation from the one Christ wishes to give, and therefore many of them will very soon turn away from Him.

And what do we today expect and desire from Him? Is it what He wishes to bring us, or what we project onto His image because we want to see Him as an expression of our own moods and whims? And do we desire Him Himself?..

Today's reading allows us to see the Kingdom through the eyes of Jesus' contemporaries, who welcomed him as he entered Jerusalem (vv. 35–38). Messianic expectations were intense at the time, so it is no surprise that Jesus carefully conceals his identity as Messiah until the appointed moment. The enthusiastic crowd in Jerusalem's streets explains everything: had Jesus so much as hinted at his mission, he would immediately have been made the leader of a popular movement like the many that were then breaking out in Judea.

But sooner or later Jesus had to declare himself publicly, and he apparently chooses a moment when there will simply no longer be time to make him the leader of a messianic uprising. His own first act is to go to the Temple, where he then remains until the very end of his ministry in Jerusalem, having first cleared its courts of the traders who had taken them over (vv. 45–48).

Trading in the Temple court was, of course, forbidden by the Torah but sanctioned by tradition; moreover, it brought considerable income not only to the traders themselves but also to the Temple treasury. Jesus, however, evidently had no intention of tolerating a tradition that contradicted the God-given Law. For him, the messianic Kingdom begins with the holy place becoming truly holy, and here there can be no compromise. For the people, on the other hand, the messianic Kingdom was to begin with expelling the Romans and restoring independence; almost everyone then thought the rest would follow easily. It is precisely this false ordering of priorities that Jesus draws attention to as he weeps over Jerusalem (vv. 41–44). In speaking of ‘trenches’ and encirclement, Jesus undoubtedly has in mind the events of AD 70, when another anti-Roman uprising did indeed grow into a religious war that ended in defeat and the utter devastation of Jerusalem.

That uprising became possible precisely because so many people then understood the Kingdom in purely outward, political and ideological terms, and scarcely thought of it as a spiritual reality. This shift of emphasis made the catastrophe inevitable. And it proved a double catastrophe: first the Saviour's death on the Cross, then the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. But while Jesus' death on the Cross culminates in his resurrection, the national catastrophe lasts for centuries. And Jesus weeps as he sees centuries of his people's suffering. Perhaps he also weeps because even he is powerless to change anything here. For every people, like every person, is free. And chooses its own destiny.

The evangelist combines in one account Jesus' triumphal entry into the holy city, when praise and joy cannot be restrained by any force, so that even the stones are ready to sing glory to the coming King, and Jesus' sorrowful weeping over Jerusalem. The city of promise here becomes a collective image of all who wait for Christ, who cannot live without Him, but who do not recognize Him and cannot believe that their hope is being fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Before our eyes there is both triumph and catastrophe, because the city, the people, and individual persons are given the long-awaited opportunity to see, recognize, and meet their dream, but they "do not know the time of visitation."

Deep down, we would probably like this time to be clear, obvious to everyone, or at least for it to be optional, not for everyone. But such a time does happen, and what is most terrible is that it can be missed: one can fail to recognize God when He passes nearby...

Entering Jerusalem, Jesus weeps over its fate. He clearly foresees the city's sad destiny: in A.D. 70, after the anti-Roman revolt raised by the Zealots and the war that followed, Jerusalem will be razed to the ground by the Roman army sent to suppress the revolt. In the Middle Ages, and partly also in modern times, an opinion was widespread and popular among Christians that this catastrophe became a punishment for the Jewish people's rejection of the Messiah sent to them. Yet Jesus Himself looks at the situation differently. For Him this is above all a tragedy, a national catastrophe. He does not look at it as just retribution. For Him it is rather a rejected and therefore missed opportunity.

In the lives both of individuals and of whole peoples, there are crossroads at which the direction of further spiritual movement is determined and set for years ahead, if we are speaking about a person, or for centuries ahead, if we are speaking about a people. There is nothing predetermined here, no program written in advance, no fate or doom. On the contrary, such a crossroads is always a moment of highest freedom. A moment of that choice when the person himself or the people themselves choose and determine what later may look to them like doom or fate. The day of the Savior's entry into Jerusalem became such a moment for the Jewish people.

Of course, one can say that the enthusiasm with which the crowd met Him in the streets of Jerusalem was not worth much: the enthusiasm of crowds never lasts long. But the people did have the possibility of a choice, a serious choice determining further history for centuries ahead, and Jesus understands this perfectly. He also understands something else: like all such choices, this one essentially comes down to whether to follow God or one's own opinions, traditions, and habits. And the second option is always catastrophic. The only question is how soon this catastrophe will come. That it will come is beyond doubt: missed opportunities always exact a price, and the greater the opportunity, the more terrible the catastrophe will be if that opportunity is missed.

That is why Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He understands as no one else does what has been given and what has been missed. And He also understands what the consequences will be.

Today's reading contains the disciples' rejoicing and the Lord Jesus' sorrow. True, genuine faith is indeed always joyful. This does not mean that a Christian must always be in high spirits, but even amid trials and sin our darkness must not smother the light. If joy seems to us incompatible with reverent fear of God, with the seriousness of prayer and penitential weeping, then we become like the Pharisees “from among the crowd,” to whom the Lord said that if we do not rejoice, the stones will have to do it for us!

And the second aspect of this encounter between God and man is Jesus' sorrow over Jerusalem, which never recognised His coming. This sorrow is one expression of His love for sinful people. The Lord is not angry; He does not curse the city or punish it, but only weeps. He brought us life, and we turned away from His gift.

Often the memory of these tears restrains us from sin far more strongly than fear of punishment or of God's wrath. We encounter God—in prayer, in reading Scripture, in worship—almost every day. Let us remember the rejoicing and the tears in today's chapter.

The carefree times are over. If earlier the apostles could preach without a penny of money and without bread in a bag, now not even a sword can save them and their Teacher. There is a time when God does not grant the prayer even of the most righteous person, and when one cannot trust even oneself. Jesus must drink His cup, and Peter deceives himself, assuring the Teacher of faithfulness to the grave.

What should one do when "the time of the lawless and the power of darkness" comes? If the apostles did not know, how can we know? All they have left are Jesus' words: "I prayed that your faith may not fail..." Faith that even in the darkness everything remains in God's hands...

The path to Golgotha began even before Gethsemane, with loneliness among the disciples who did not understand Him. Very little time would pass before the apostles became entirely different people, but for now they are causing the Teacher additional suffering.

Seeing this, Christ, who came to save us, does not reject the disciples. This is precisely the meaning of His words to Peter, which contain both a warning about his coming weakness and the commission to strengthen his brothers after his fall. Christ sees Peter’s weakness, just as He sees the weakness of each of us; yet He not only refrains from condemning or rejecting Peter and every one of us, but also strengthens us. Even in the words addressed to Judas, we hear not condemnation, but a sorrowful reproach capable of awakening the conscience.

If only we were ready to accept His support. Peter will be able to do so a little later, but Judas will not want to...

The name of the Mount of Olives makes us remember the oil used for anointing, including anointing to kingship. But Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, and He goes toward His triumph not through ritual anointing, but through sacrificial suffering.

The events we read about in the Gospel of Luke today are familiar to everyone. We constantly encounter injustice and violence, cruelty and betrayal. Sin and suffering have penetrated human nature so deeply that they seem inevitable. And so, as we prepare for Great Lent, we read how God, having become man, drank this cup to the dregs. Unlike us, He accepted our suffering voluntarily in order to share it with us. We therefore seek an opportunity to honor His suffering through some spiritual effort. Last week we read the words of the apostle and evangelist John, who told us that this can only be an effort to love our neighbor, an effort to keep Christ's commandments. In the second half of the sixth century BC, the author of the second half of the book of Isaiah also conveyed God's words to us: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness...” And the passages about Christ's way to the Cross that we read this week tell us that loving God and loving people means standing with the Mother of God at the foot of the Cross.

The most remarkable thing about the arrest and interrogation of Jesus is that no one involved in it, except, of course, Jesus Himself, truly understands what is happening. The disciples think that they are witnessing the beginning of a failed uprising which ended before it could even begin. Peter, the most determined of them, is ready to fight and even tries to start it, but the Teacher's response leaves him completely bewildered, as it does the other disciples. They do not understand what is happening or what they should do next. In the end they simply scatter: there is nothing else left for them to do, since everything is lost.

Peter follows the Teacher, but now without any hope, simply wanting to see what will happen to Him. He denies Him so easily precisely because nothing matters to him any longer. Everything is over, so what difference does it make now whether or not he was with Jesus? It would be utterly absurd to suffer for taking part in an uprising that never happened. Only the cock's crow brings Peter back to reality: true reality, where relationships matter absolutely and where nothing is over yet, but everything is only beginning.

As for the high priest and his circle, they understand little more. For them too, Jesus is merely the leader of a failed messianic uprising who remains dangerous as long as He is alive. All the charges are transparently fabricated and judicial procedure is not observed. Clearly, they simply want to get rid of Him.

But He goes about His work: bringing into the world the Kingdom that He must bring. Caring for His disciples without relying on them. Paying no attention to mockery and abuse. And making no attempt to defend Himself at the “trial,” not only because it is indeed a “trial” in quotation marks, but also because in this case He could have defended Himself only by abandoning the fulfilment of the one supreme task for which He came into the world. And He goes on, to the cross. In a fallen world, there is no other path for Him.

What happened was what had to happen, as Jesus had repeatedly foretold to His disciples. The world under the power of Satan could not endure its meeting with the Righteous One. It had either to die to sin itself, to change radically, to be reborn, or to pass a death sentence on this Man.

Having become disciples of Jesus, we must not forget this incompatibility of Christ and sin, not only in Him Himself, not only in our hearts, but also in the world. If we have truly found faith in Christ, then the choice inevitably stands before us: to die to ourselves and live with Him, or to join those who condemned Him to death two thousand years ago. Peter's denial shows that this choice does not change a person automatically, that his fears, weakness, and cowardice remain with him. Yet there is still an enormous difference between Peter, who wept bitterly over his denial, and the members of the Sanhedrin.

In describing Jesus' arrest and everything that follows, Luke presents events in such a way that the logic of all that is happening becomes entirely clear. Of course, there is more than enough reason for outrage both at Judas's betrayal (vv. 1–6, 47–48) and at the behaviour of those who took on the role of guards and judges (vv. 63–71). Yet the Evangelist has told the whole preceding story in such a way that an attentive reader would hardly expect a different ending.

It is entirely clear that the trial of Jesus described in today's reading can only be called a parody of judicial proceedings. But it has long been clear that no one even wants to understand what our contemporaries might call ‘the Jesus phenomenon.’ He himself speaks of this quite unequivocally (vv. 52–53). Equally unequivocal is his assessment of his judges, who are in effect condemning him without a trial (vv. 67–68). It is no wonder that Jesus now falls silent. Previously, he bore witness to the Kingdom every day and every hour. Now his only testimony has sounded simply as a statement of an accomplished fact (vv. 69–70).

Apparently the moment had come when further words lost all meaning. Yet, on the other hand, a different, new witness was beginning: witness through death and resurrection. Apparently, in every witness's life, a moment comes sooner or later when they fall silent—not because they have nothing more to say, but because further words lose their meaning. It may, of course, seem that speaking always has a purpose, that even in the most aggressive and hostile crowd there will always be someone who hears a word addressed specifically to them. Yet Jesus' own example shows that witness, at least witness through words, has its limit. Of course, only God, who guides the witness, can mark that limit, but the Saviour's own example shows that it exists. The point is probably not that the Messiah, who brought the Kingdom into the world, has nothing more to say to this world. Nor is it that there was no one left in the world to hear him: the history of Christianity was only beginning. The point, it seems, is that no ‘no’ flung back to God or to the One he sends in response to the call passes without a trace. Each such ‘no’ changes the spiritual condition of an individual or an entire people, until at last a moment comes when these changes, at first imperceptible, produce consequences that many find utterly unbelievable and unexpectedly terrible. The Saviour's death on the Cross becomes just such an expected surprise—though it was a surprise to many, not to him himself.

Today's Gospel reading reminds us of a triptych—an icon in three parts. At the centre Christ teaches in the Temple; on the left, Satan enters Judas; on the right, Christ and the Passover lamb. It seems to us now that these are the three central themes of the Gospel story, and that there are no others. Thus, in a single reading, providentially appointed for us by the Church, we see the whole Gospel. And this is very precious. We often break our spiritual life into experiences of small fragments. There is a purpose to this: throughout the Nativity Fast, for instance, we think about the birth of the Divine Infant, and then, after Christmas has passed, we spend some time experiencing it as something accomplished. Extending one experience over months has one kind of meaning. Suddenly living through the whole Gospel in a single minute has another, but no less important, meaning. These are, in fact, two limiting points between which lies the whole spectrum of our ordinary spiritual life. And every scientist knows that, if we want to obtain a complete picture of a phenomenon, we must run all its parameters through the ranges available to us. For any phenomenon may look and mean something quite different at one limit than at the other. This is difficult; it demands a special investment of effort; it demands an ability to ‘readjust’. But without this, fullness cannot be attained. This is impossible in professional work: one person cannot encompass everything even within their own field. Yet in the spirit we are obliged to seek wholeness, because we must come into our own personhood, which is by definition whole. Of course, this wholeness, even in today's Gospel words, does not always reveal itself, nor does it do so immediately; but with some experience we can, and must, learn this. Sometimes, for example, we have no time to complete our morning or evening rule of prayer. If we have our own experience of discipline and diligence in this, then, when time is lacking, we can withdraw for one or two minutes, close our eyes, concentrate our attention to the utmost—almost to the point of pain in the head—and live through the entire rule of prayer in those one or two minutes. It is important to learn to do this. It is a step towards the prayer of silence. For silence is very full and intense.

Many have pondered the reason for Judas's betrayal: historians, writers and New Testament scholars. Yet it still remains unknown. Many different suggestions have been made, but none can be considered exhaustive, although many of them apparently did identify particular significant details in the overall picture.

The evangelist, meanwhile, points to only one cause: Satan, who, in his words, ‘entered into Judas’. To a scholar, whether a historian or a biblical specialist, such an explanation will seem clearly inadequate: from a scholarly point of view, it explains nothing. But perhaps the evangelist had no intention of offering a historical explanation? This does not mean that he disregards history or facts.

Luke is indeed a historian. He carefully gathers and analyses everything connected with the Saviour's earthly life, and his books—both his Gospel and the Book of Acts—are rich in factual detail. Yet in Judas's case he evidently prefers to avoid the explanations historians seek. Such an approach can hardly be considered accidental. Of course, there are things a Christian finds painful even to think about, let alone write about. But is that all there is to it?

Perhaps there are things that cannot be explained by anything, by any circumstances or facts? Can evil be explained at all? And, more importantly, does it need to be explained? Every sin, of course, has a cause. Judas's sin was not without a cause either. But what matters for spiritual life is not the causes of a person's action, but its spiritual meaning, determined by the intention the person puts into it. Whatever Judas's motives, the result is clear: he wants to be rid of his Teacher, at any cost, even at the cost of betrayal. Such an intention is essentially wholly irrational, like all evil carried through to its end.

There is a goal here, but no meaning. It is no coincidence that, having carried out his plan, Judas hanged himself: he could not bear the meaninglessness of his own action. This was not intellectual meaninglessness—in that respect he had thought everything through carefully enough and carried it out successfully—but spiritual meaninglessness. The betrayal proved to be nothing but betrayal; it had, and could have, no other spiritual meaning, although when Judas was planning it, it had seemed to have meaning.

The evangelist's mention of Satan is not accidental: here we see the familiar devilish game in which the spirit of darkness tries to create the illusion that evil has spiritual meaning and substance, which it does not and cannot possess. And Luke, apparently, is not concerned with why Judas fell into the trap that had been laid. He only wants to show what can happen to someone who falls into it.

We love Christ very much, and often because of this love we feel so sorry for Him in His sufferings that we want so badly for Him to avoid them by some miracle. In a way, we become like Peter when he said, "This shall never happen to You" (Matt. 16:22), only we cry out: if only You could avoid such suffering. And in those moments it seems to us that if Judas had been stopped, nothing would have happened. Judas becomes the object of our involuntary desire for revenge.

But we must not forget the main thing. Christ's suffering was voluntary. In the whole drama, Judas played no decisive role; he was simply a victim, a victim of his own weakness. Therefore it is wrong to see him as the embodiment of world evil or anything of the kind. If Judas had not been there, everything would have happened according to another scenario, but the meaning of the Redemption, as the greatest event in human history, would not have changed.

Another question that often arises in connection with Judas concerns his free will. Was he merely an instrument in the hands of providence? After all, Christ says that he was the "son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12). Of course, this is not so either. A person is never merely an instrument in God's hands; each person whom He created "in His image and likeness" is too precious to Him. Some exegetes believe that when Christ dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas, He did so not in order to amaze the disciples with His omniscience, but to give Judas a chance to come to his senses, since the conversation was quiet, as we can see if we read the text carefully (John 13:26).

Besides, Judas could have repented as Peter did. But he would have had to repent exactly as Peter did, by bearing worthy fruit of repentance. Judas does not manage to do this. And that makes him deeply pitiful. Pity is the feeling that should arise in us toward this man.

All the Evangelists describe the Kingdom as something inseparable from the person of Jesus Christ. There is nothing surprising about this: it was he who brought the Kingdom into the world; from the very beginning, the whole fullness of the Kingdom was contained in him, and it is impossible to enter the Kingdom without communion with him. And so, at the Last Supper, Jesus himself connects the fullness of the Kingdom with the fullness of his own life, that divine-human fullness which he has borne within himself from the moment of his conception.

In essence, the Last Supper was nothing other than a Passover Seder, a Jewish ritual meal celebrating Pesach, also sometimes called the Jewish Passover. Its central moment was the prayer of blessing over the bread and wine, which united everyone gathered at the festive table with God and with one another. This was the culmination of the feast (at least of its celebration in the home), when God's presence sanctified the gathering and made it a community, not only uniting those sharing the meal but also making them part of God's people, understood as a single spiritual body. Jesus also joins the fullness of his life to it, making that fullness, and therefore the Kingdom, accessible to everyone taking part in the festive meal. He says the traditional prayers of blessing over the bread and wine, adding words about the new alliance (‘covenant’), which he connects with his blood, just as, in blessing the bread, he connects it with his body (vv. 19–20). To understand these words, it is important to bear in mind that in Hebrew usage the expression ‘body and blood’ meant life, human life in all its fullness and all its manifestations. In Jesus' case, this life was clearly inseparable from the divinity and the fullness of the Kingdom that were the very essence of his life.

Our life is fundamentally natural, and even when we enter the Kingdom it remains natural; only this nature is transfigured, as all nature is transfigured in the Kingdom. Jesus' life is fundamentally supernatural; its natural component is simply united with this supernatural foundation, united to the point of complete inseparability, yet never merging with it completely. And he offers this divine-human life of his to those who are ready to share the sacred meal with him. It is no surprise that Jesus mentions the Kingdom he bequeaths to his disciples and the meal in the Kingdom (vv. 28–30). For any meal in which Jesus takes part becomes a meal of the Kingdom, regardless of where or when it takes place. This is why the breaking of bread becomes the foundation of the Church's spiritual life as early as the lifetime of the first generation of Christians: every such gathering becomes a meal shared by the risen Jesus and his growing number of disciples. And therefore a meal of the Kingdom.

The feast of Passover is approaching, and the disciples are sure that in a few hours their Teacher will become the promised King of Israel, will offer in the Temple an atoning sacrifice for His people, and everyone will serve Him, and therefore also them, His closest companions. Jesus, as it were, confirms their words: everything will happen very soon - He will not taste the Passover meal until He offers the sacrifice in the triumph of the Kingdom of God, and the disciples will have twelve thrones and authority over all Israel.

And here the paradox of the Gospel reaches its highest point: everything will be exactly so, but everything will be completely different. Jesus Himself will become the Passover sacrifice for the sin of the world. He will be the least of people - He will be executed as a criminal; the disciples will face persecution and the collapse of their hopes. The sacrifice has been offered, and those who share in it have become citizens of the Kingdom, which is utterly unlike all the other kingdoms of the world.

During the Passover seder that became the Last Supper, Jesus showed His disciples more clearly than ever before what Christianity is. It was the Last Supper that became for Christians the event on which the life of the Church would subsequently be founded, right up to Christ's return in glory. Every Christian breaking of bread, every Eucharist, becomes in essence a continuation of that same Last Supper which, while belonging to eternity, is at the same time refracted again and again in history, becoming what the Church usually calls a sacrament.

But what was the Last Supper? Outwardly it was an ordinary Passover seder, the traditional Jewish ritual festive meal held on the first day, or more precisely the first night, of the feast of Passover. In this respect Jesus invents nothing new. He does not intend to devise some special religious ritual for His disciples. And this is understandable: Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. He speaks of something else, of His body and His blood. What does He mean?

In traditional Jewish usage, whether in Hebrew or Aramaic, body and blood mean the human person, human nature and human life. But life in all its fullness, both natural and spiritual. In the case of Christ this is very much indeed. One might say it is infinitely much, for He bears within Himself the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. And Jewish ritual meals had always been a place of encounter, not only between God and the human person, but also among the people gathered at one table. God's presence united and sanctified them as one whole, one organism, one spiritual body. In Gospel times the entire Jewish people were perceived precisely in this way, as a single spiritual organism and not merely as an ethnic community. Ritual meals played an enormous part in their existence as one spiritual body: above all, of course, the Sabbath meals, but also those of other Jewish feasts, all founded on the breaking of bread as the moment when the participants in the meal met God and one another.

Jesus brings Himself into this communion. He brings the fullness of His life, and therefore the life of the Kingdom He has brought into the world. He brings it for all the ages to come, until the day when He returns as the triumphant King of His Kingdom fully revealed. Christianity is precisely participation in this life of Christ, sharing in the life of His Kingdom. Everything else is merely its setting, a historical framework which may take any form so long as it does not contradict the principal task. In an extreme case one can do without it altogether, provided that what began during the Last Supper is preserved. This, in fact, is what makes the Church the Church. Everything else will be added, if it is needed.

As Easter and the Passion draw near, the Gospel narrative becomes like scenes from a documentary film. The evangelist records every step Christ takes towards Golgotha. Judas' betrayal… the day of Unleavened Bread… an unexpectedly detailed account of how Jesus sends two disciples to ‘prepare the Passover’, of the words, prepared by the Teacher, that they say to a chance passer-by—though it is unclear whether this reveals the Lord's foreknowledge or results from an arrangement made beforehand. This steady movement towards Christ's redemptive work is expressed very well in Bach's St Matthew Passion: in the principal theme of the prelude, a sorrowful tread can be heard, like Christ's footsteps on the way of the Cross…

‘Then Satan entered Judas.’ The figure of this apostle and traitor has aroused persistent interest throughout subsequent history. His action has been explained by the most varied motives, from commonplace greed to a cunning plan to induce Christ to take active political action as the Messiah… The Gospel, however, does not go into lengthy explanations. It simply states: Satan entered him. Evil is irrational, inexplicable; its original source is the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. A person falls under their influence if he opens the door of his heart to them. Understanding that ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of this age’ (Eph 6:12) should awaken compassion for the captives of evil. Is this why, according to another evangelist, Christ addresses Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane with the question, ‘Friend! Why have you come?’ (Mt 26:50)—reminding us of God's first question in history to fallen humanity: ‘Where are you?’ (Gen 3:9). Both questions turn a person standing on the brink of a final fall back towards himself: where are you in relation to God? Have you lost your very self—the self the Creator intended? For we were created to enter ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ (Rom 8:21), but the fall into darkness deprived us of that freedom: ‘whoever commits sin is a slave of sin’ (Jn 8:34).

‘And when the hour came, He reclined at table…’ We get the impression that, with His inner vision, Christ continually checks the times and seasons appointed for the redemptive Sacrifice ‘before all ages’, in the Pre-eternal Council. He measures every step against the Father's will. All His life the Lord had been moving towards ‘this hour’ (cf. Jn 12:27), and now that hour has come. ‘I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before My suffering.’ Some scholars believe that Jesus specifically celebrated the Passover feast with His disciples a day early for this purpose. So ardent was His desire to spend the last hours of His earthly life with those close to Him, with His friends—those who had been with Him from the beginning, and who much later would follow His way of the Cross...

And now the Eucharist is celebrated: the sacrament of the Risen Christ before the Resurrection, the sign of His death before His death, the ‘remembrance’ of His life while beside Him. Jesus will never again eat the Passover lamb: He Himself has become the Lamb. He will not drink of the fruit of the vine: His death will open the heavens, and the new wine of the Holy Spirit will pour down upon the earth. But, as always in life, the sublime stands beside the lowly: the New Covenant comes to people who, on the eve of the Saviour's suffering and death, are still measuring their ambitions against one another, competing, struggling for privileged places in the Kingdom of Heaven and disputing which of them is ‘greater’. ‘But I am among you as one who serves.’ In the L'Arche communities, where people with intellectual disabilities live with their assistants, there is a tradition of literally washing one another's feet—not only the feet of those one likes, but also of those towards whom one feels aversion. This profound and simple rite expresses the very essence of the Gospel. ‘Let us take the next-to-last place, because Jesus has already taken the last,’ said St Charles de Foucauld.

Christ truly took the very last place at the meal in His Kingdom. He became a small piece of bread and a drop of wine. And His unobtrusive yet effective Presence, entering us, makes us sharers in His Life, so that we too may give this Life to others.

The Last Supper takes place in a large upper room, already prepared to receive guests. This upper room is like a person who, after being freed from dark forces, should invite Christ in so that He may dwell constantly in his heart. Christ entered the upper room in Jerusalem to celebrate the Last Supper, but even today every heart is capable of becoming such an upper room through the Eucharist.

If Jesus is not invited into the swept and prepared upper room, then unclean spirits will settle there. Many times attempts have been made to justify Judas and to attribute lofty motives to his betrayal, but the Evangelist testifies plainly: Satan entered Judas. He entered precisely because Judas turned away from the Teacher. And we see that the other disciples too, though they did not commit betrayal as Judas did, thought in categories of earthly success. On the eve of the Teacher's sufferings, about which they had been warned, they frivolously argue about who is greatest... Fallen human nature is ready to distort everything; even Christian service it tries to turn into a means of self-assertion. And if such a temptation begins to overcome us, may the Savior's words never fall silent in our consciousness: let the greatest among you be as the younger, and the leader as the one who serves.