Fr. Rafail Noica: “But Judas did not Wish to Understand”
See, this is God Who seeks to save man by all possible means but Who doesn’t transgress man’s freedom.
At the Twelve Gospels service on Holy Thursday, pay attention to the [third] Antiphon after the first long Gospel. You will see how the Church’s hymnography highlights how many attempts and words Christ made to save Judas. And each troparion ends with: “But Judas did not wish to understand.”
Many people believe it is written about Judas that “it is written” and it must happen that way. It was not God’s plan for a person to perish in Hell so that God could accomplish His plan of salvation! Then the sacrificial Lamb would have been Judas, and not Christ! It “was written” about Judas that he would sell Him, in the sense that God knew man’s freedom beforehand which He did not want to transgress with His omnipotence! Look in the Gospels and see by how many means Christ tried to save Judas, to show him the evil he was doing. And also read the Synaxarion from the Triodion for that day; it will show you some very important things! “But Judas, the transgressor, did not wish to understand!” The Church testifies here that this concerns Judas’ free will.
And speaking of him for whom “it was written” that he had to do this deed…Yes, it was written for Judas, but Christ is the One who “tears up the written record of our iniquities” (as we chant during Great Lent in the Troparion from the service of the Sixth Hour). And so He who tore up the written record wanted to tear up Judas’ written record. Christ is the Same One Who tore up the written record of the Ninevites in the time of Jonah. Through the Prophet Jonah, he informed the city of Nineveh that if they don’t repent, they will perish in their sins. The Ninevites received this message and repented—-and God also “repented” of His “creation” so to speak, that is, He didn’t destroy any soul in Nineveh! (And the Prophet was troubled because he wasn’t justified before the pagans, since his prophetic words were not fulfilled! But he knew God is merciful, so he wanted to run away from that whole “story,” because he was caught between a rock and a hard place). And so Christ wanted to do the same with Judas.
“What is written for man” is not a predestination that man cannot run away from. This is the concept of paganism, that man cannot escape what is predestined for him. With us, there is no predestination—there is Providence, which is a freely thinking, free God in relation to a free man! And how much freedom does man have! If we don’t have the strength to do what we would like to do, God gives us that strength through our prayers. And Christ would have given Judas the strength not to fall into that path that led him to suicide. And so Christ wanted to erase Judas’ written record. Through his free will—maybe stubbornness, or who knows what was in Judas’ heart—Judas was left laden with this prescience of God, with the deed he was going to do, refusing in a way God Who wanted to free him from this act. And Christ as the Almighty God is compelled in the end to give Judas a morsel of bread with wine, telling him: “What you are going to do, do quickly!” God the Almighty said to Judas: thy will be done! And if Christ hadn’t said this (because Judas was looking for a way to betray Him), I am convinced that Judas would still be looking for a way up to now, and he wouldn’t find it…If the power of the Word of God hadn’t allowed this to happen, it couldn’t have happened! But see, this is God Who seeks to save man by all possible means but Who doesn’t transgress man’s freedom.
And there are also Christ’s words from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of St. John: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” (John 5:24) Why will he pass from death into life? (This life is called death, and the one we will pass into—what we call our death—will be true life!) Because our whole life will have been a judgment before God, and if in this judgment we will ever fully say to God: “Thy will be done!”—then the Final Judgment is taking place now.
And maybe this is the sense in which we can understand the passage in Revelation which talks about “the first Resurrection” and how those who take part in the first Resurrection will not be troubled by the second death anymore.
—Fr. Rafail Noica, Excerpt from the Conference “Crisis in the Church,” translated by Grig Gheorghiu