Do you betray me with a kiss…?!
How cruel is the betrayal of a loved one! How deep are the wounds inflicted by those we love! And what is more painful to the soul than being abandoned and betrayed by friends? “And if someone asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your hands?’ he will say, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends'” (Zechariah 13:6).
Have you ever had a friend you trusted more than a brother, closer to you than your own self, who then deceived and betrayed you? “For it is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend” (Psalm 55:12-13).
This treachery, this betrayal, was the Lord’s greatest pain from those he loved, not to mention bearing the sins of the whole world, which disfigured the beauty of his face and ruined the splendour and majesty of his beauty: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2).
No knife, spear or sword was used in this sad and painful betrayal of the Lord. Instead, the storehouses of love were raided, and the dearest and most precious thing in love’s treasury, the kiss, was stolen in order to deceive the Lord. And in the excess of his pride, the betrayer did not realize that the Lord would quickly see that this kiss had been stolen from the treasures of his holy love. So Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48)
You steal the kisses of holy love, cover them with Absalom’s false kiss, and come to betray me with them?! If only you had not kissed me! If only you had come openly revealing your betrayal, instead of with a treacherous embrace! If only you had pierced me like those who pierced me, rather than using the kiss, that medicine which heals the wounded, the suffering, the grieving and the broken-hearted! “They will look on me, on him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).
Ah, Lord, what I do to you! I use your robe, hide behind your garment and shelter behind your words to steal your glory; I use false kisses of love, like Absalom, to make glory and honour for myself apart from you, even if the price is the death of my father David!?
I use the same tools of betrayal that Judas used against you; I curse and swear, like my father Peter, that I never knew you and was never with you, whenever the world threatens me and tries to strip me of my glory, honour and reputation. And so I betray you and sell you, not for thirty pieces of silver, but for free, for nothing!?
My Lord, take away the shame of my betrayal of you throughout my life; tear the masks of Absalom and Judas from my face; and look at me whenever I am about to betray you, for the gaze of your love is enough to scatter my fear, expose my betrayal, convict me, bring me to repentance and lift me above myself. “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:61-62).
Father Ephrem Michel
