Dear St. E’s parish family,

Quite a few of you asked me to post my homily from last Sunday, and so I offer my text below. The basic message is that hope in Jesus Christ is our Christian solution to our Judas problem in the Church.

As for the work of hope mentioned in my homily, I will be meeting with our Parish Pastoral Council this Monday to discuss among other things what we might do as a parish to help reform our Church.

Sincerely in Christ,

                Monsignor Bill Parent


Today we heard Isaiah the prophet speak of being ridiculed for his faith. There are many reasons we Catholics are ridiculed for our faith, but lately the ridicule is for what we might call our “Judas problem.” Let’s consider how we might cope with being ridiculed for our Judas problem.

What’s a Judas problem? Recall that as Catholics we believe that the bishops today are the successors to the apostles, which is to say that the ministry of leadership that Jesus entrusted to the twelve apostles was passed down by them to bishops. There’s a sarcastic old saying that recently seems very fitting: if the bishops are indeed the successors to the apostles, then that means one out of twelve bishops is a successor to Judas.

But what exactly is the nature of this Judas problem? What’s the grain of truth beneath the sarcasm? At one level, we know that the Judas problem begins with betrayal – not just casual betrayal of someone we hardly know but the serious, calculating betrayal of someone close to us who has been entrusted with great responsibility.

Yet it’s more than just betrayal. Recall that Peter also famously betrayed Jesus, and Peter became one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church. So the Judas problem is not just about betrayal. The Judas problem is also about what happens after betrayal. The heart of the Judas problem is despair.

Think about it. Our Christian faith in Jesus Christ does not depend on Judas committing suicide. Judas could have become a great saint. He could have become one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church. His story could have been an even greater turn-around than Peter’s turn-around story. But Judas despaired and never sought forgiveness, which more than betrayal is what sets him apart from the other eleven apostles.

The Judas problem has been with us from the beginning of Christianity. It’s a very ancient problem. To have a Church, to have a community of faith, means having leaders in some form, and to have leaders, in turn, means eventually being betrayed by them in one way or another. And that’s not just a Christian problem, that’s a human problem. In all walks of life, our leaders will sometimes betray us. The question posed by the Judas problem is whether the nature of our response to betrayal will be despair.

Despair can take many forms. Suicide of the betrayer is just one form of despair.

• Another form of despair is doing nothing about betrayal – a subtle form that implies we can’t change so we just have to live with this betrayal.

• Covering-up betrayal is also a form of despair – a form that implies either that this betrayal can’t be healed or that the community won’t accept its healing.

• Leaving the Church is also tinged with a kind of despair – despair that the community of the Church will not be able to heal this betrayal.

What’s our alternative to the many forms of despair? The answer to despair for Christians is, in a word, hope. Hope is our Christian answer to our Judas problem. Unlike Judas, Peter lived in hope – the hope that somehow in a way he could not possibly have foreseen he might be forgiven. We, too, try to live in hope – hope that the damage done by these betrayals might be healed. We hope for justice that betrayers accept the consequences of their betrayals. We also hope for a better Church, a holier Church, a Church more like the Church Jesus intended.

And authentic Christian hope is not just an abstract idea or a vague attitude. As Pope Benedict explained in his encyclical letter, The Hope of Salvation, in biblical terms hope and faith are essentially the same thing. With this understanding, it would be fair to paraphrase today’s second reading about faith this way: hope, if it does not have works, is dead. To live in authentic hope means doing something about whatever challenges our hope. Faith and hope are not just ideas for Christians. They are ideas that by their very nature must be expressed in action. To live in hope means working for accountability, working for healing, working for reform.

And so we hope, even when we are ridiculed. Yes, some of our leaders have acted like Judas in their betrayals, but Jesus Christ poured out his life for us on a Cross and in this Eucharist precisely to heal the wounds of betrayal. May we grow in our faith that Jesus Christ, not any bishop, but Jesus Christ is our ultimate hope.