O God, who willed your Son to submit for our sake
to the yoke of the Cross,
so that you might drive from us the power of the enemy,
grant us, your servants, to attain the grace of the resurrection.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
In a sense, Spy Wednesday commemorates the most notorious conspiracy ever concieved. The Puppet Master from hell inflamed the pride of Judas and the Sanhedrin and entwined them in a diabolical scheme for the death of the Son of Man. Operating in bad faith, on the basis of a purely human prudence, the betrayer and the enemies of Jesus work under the cover of darkness.
But nothing is hidden from the Son of God. He knows his betrayer’s heart and the plans hidden in the recesses of his corrupt conscience. But this Our Lord keeps between Himself and the traitor. While He chooses not to expose the hidden sinner and even allows Judas to receive the Holy Communion at the Last Supper, Christ does confront him directly: What you are about to do, do quickly (Jn 13:27).
Judas then makes his choice definitive. Satan enters into him and it is night, the hour of Christ’s enemies, when darkness reigns (cf., 27-28; Lk 22:53).
The Passion of the Lord is a meticulously planned and premeditated murder conceived and directed by Satan Himself. It is the quintessential overthrow of all that is Holy, the supremely evil pact, contracted in the black-curtained dungeon of the cosmic secret society.
I am not talking about the ultimate Jewish conspiracy theory. Such a mental construct is the product of a facile analysis by those who believe all history is to be explained by human machinations of the elites kept hidden from the masses, in which the Jews become the scapegoats of choice. No, this has to do with something far more basic to human nature: the bad faith of a deliberately hidden malice; the personal choice to work in the darkness.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God (Jn 3:19-21).
Our hidden sins are not hidden from God. Even though He continually makes Himself vulnerable to our ingratitude, especially in the Eucharist, His silence is patience, not ignorance. But while He sees into the heart of each of us, He can do nothing for us, even as He could do nothing for Judas as He confronted him with his sin, unless we convict ourselves and bring our deeds into the light.
We should not fear the light. Jesus exposed Himself to the effects of Our sins because He loves us. He is the true light that gives light to every man (Jn 1:8). This is the time of mercy. It is the great and momentous outpouring of God’s light and mercy. As Pope Francis says:
God always thinks with mercy: do not forget this. God always thinks with mercy: our merciful Father. God thinks like a father who awaits the return of his child and goes to meet him, sees him come when he is still far away … What does this mean? That each and every day he went out to see if his son was coming home. This is our merciful Father. It is the sign that He was waiting for him from the terrace of is house; God thinks like the Samaritan that does not approach the victim to commiserate with him, or look the other way, but rescue him without asking for anything in return, without asking if he was Jew, if it was pagan, a Samaritan, rich or poor: he does not ask anything. He does not ask these things, he asks for nothing. He goes to his aid: This is how God thinks. God thinks like the shepherd who gives his life to defend and save his sheep.
Let us cease to live under the cover of darkness and come into the light of God’s mercy. May He drive out the power and darkness of our enemy and bring us into the light of His resurrection. Make a good confession.
Mary Victrix 
Bellissimo.
It’s so good when we can hear such words from a priest. I mean it’s so good when a priest is available to hear confession. Here when I live is very dificult to find good priests to hear confessions. It’s almost a miracle have a priest who help you to grow in espiritual life! Almost all of the priests in South America (América Latina) just worry about social problems, like poverty, illiteracy, health problems (That’s absolutely ridiculous because that’s not the mission/task of the priest.) And the real problems like the espiritual life of their flock, the flock that Christ entrusted to then, they are absolutely negligent. I’m very upset because some priests that I have asked to hearing my confession for Easter said to me poor excuses for not attend me. This city where I live is a big sh…
Father, let me share with you and all your readers this short but helpful video.
Benedict XVI: Give force to Confession
Yet about confession, I would like to share one more text. It’s an excerpt from the Letter of the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI proclaming a Year for Priests in 2009. See!
“From Saint John Mary Vianney we can learn to put our unfailing trust in the sacrament of Penance, to set it once more at the centre of our pastoral concerns, and to take up the “dialogue of salvation” which it entails. The Curé of Ars dealt with different penitents in different ways. Those who came to his confessional drawn by a deep and humble longing for God’s forgiveness found in him the encouragement to plunge into the “flood of divine mercy” which sweeps everything away by its vehemence. If someone was troubled by the thought of his own frailty and inconstancy, and fearful of sinning again, the Curé would unveil the mystery of God’s love in these beautiful and touching words: “The good Lord knows everything. Even before you confess, he already knows that you will sin again, yet he still forgives you. How great is the love of our God: he even forces himself to forget the future, so that he can grant us his forgiveness!”.[25] But to those who made a lukewarm and rather indifferent confession of sin, he clearly demonstrated by his own tears of pain how “abominable” this attitude was: “I weep because you don’t weep”,[26] he would say. “If only the Lord were not so good! But he is so good! One would have to be a brute to treat so good a Father this way!”.[27] He awakened repentance in the hearts of the lukewarm by forcing them to see God’s own pain at their sins reflected in the face of the priest who was their confessor. To those who, on the other hand, came to him already desirous of and suited to a deeper spiritual life, he flung open the abyss of God’s love, explaining the untold beauty of living in union with him and dwelling in his presence: “Everything in God’s sight, everything with God, everything to please God… How beautiful it is!”.[28] And he taught them to pray: “My God, grant me the grace to love you as much as I possibly can”.[29]
See Paragraph 9th
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20090616_anno-sacerdotale_en.html
Fr. Angelo, I’m sorry for so long comments, but I’m so upset about what those priests made to me that I need to unburden myself. (Eu preciso desabafar, as I say in Portuguese.)
Father Angelo and you all, dear Franciscan Friars, I desire, I wish wholeheartedly that you might come to my city. I can’t stand anymore the clergy of this city. They are so bad priests. I can’t stand anymore. I would like that you, Franciscan Friars, could relocate to here. Or I can fly away from this place. My spiritual life in this place is seriously in jeopardy. I want to become a saint, but I need the help of good priests, good spiritual fathers.