Have you experienced disappointment and betrayal? It is a painful matter. Then a person does not have to be in pain in the body and feels the pain of the soul, which is much more severe than the pain of the body. A person commits a betrayal that will never make him happy. We see it in the case of Judas as well. He leaves the supper room to the high priests and says: “What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you?” (Mt 26:15).

Perhaps even his feet, which Christ washed at the beginning of the dinner like a servant, have not yet dried properly, he still tastes the Easter lamb and bitter greens in his mouth, and the words of Christ still ring in his ears: “I have given you an example so that you also do as I have done to you!” (Jn 13:15) and Judas comes to betray his Master. Christ’s words at the Last Supper: “…woe to the man who betrays the Son of Man”.(Mt 26:24) are terrible. We understand their explanation, given by Christ himself: It would have been better for such a person if he had not been born. Judas had no reason to complain about Jesus. Jesus chose him as his disciple, knowing that Judas would betray him. However, Jesus leaves Judas with reason and free will. Jesus leaves Judas to decide for himself. And Judas cannot control himself, he undertakes what was supposed to end Jesus’ mission and fulfill his goal here on earth, so that Christ died for our sins and thus redeemed us. But Judas does this under the influence of sin.

Jesus also select us as his disciples. You called us friends. He often shows us his love. We see his deeds and hear his words. Everything is full of love. However, Christ does not pull us behind him by force. He also endowed us with reason and free will. Christ also knows about us, and how we will decide. However, this decision is in our hands. We are gifted with freedom and reason. This will decide our eternal life or our damnation. The Gospel tells us as a serious warning: “Woe to the man who betrays the Son of Man” (Mt 26:24).

Serious words must not let us sleep in our sin. For Judas, it was money that decided these words of Jesus, for us it can also be money, but also position, career, comfort, selfishness, and the like. Let’s realize that betrayal hurts a lot. And the stronger the love, the more the betrayal of love hurts. After all, Jesus loved us above all else. When we compare Peter with Judas and look for the right path for ourselves, because we are all weak, we should adopt the attitude of Peter who repented of his sin. Peter returns to Jesus and asks for forgiveness. Judas turns away from the mercy of Christ, despises Jesus, and wants to be alone with his sin. That’s desperation, and we don’t want that.

We must realize the power of evil. This means that we must not be left alone with our sin, we must go with it to Jesus and connect with his mercy. Let us remember the repentant rogue on the cross. This is a great proof of love for us at this time, when we remember the passion and death of the Lord Jesus. Yes, there can be many disappointments in different relationships. The worst and most dangerous thing can be our disappointment in Christ when, after sinning, we do not want to find the way back to his mercy

It’s Holy Week. Jesus also wants us to be great – modest, and humble… God bent down to us people. Why? Because he loved us. We can learn from two examples in the Gospel: Judas could not handle the situation, he was influenced by the desire for money, and he betrayed Jesus – and when he saw what he had done, he hanged himself. Peter – a spirited apostle, willing to follow Jesus to Pilate’s courtyard, denies Jesus in front of ordinary maids.

Here we see that Jesus cannot save us without us. He created us without us, but without us, he will not redeem us. Judas, under the pressure of remorse, acts unreasonably and against the teaching of Christ about mercy. He goes and undertakes a dastardly deed. He commits suicide. He committed treason against himself. He did not give his life and he has no right to take it. Peter’s behavior is the opposite. Although Peter hesitated, he realized that Jesus loved him. He knew this from several encounters, most recently in Gethsemane, when he was unable to stay awake with Jesus while praying. Peter, who had become afraid of the maids, may not have even considered his offense as it was. He did not admit that he was among those who lived with Christ for three years. But there came a moment when Jesus was passing by and a rooster crowed. Here, Peter remembered the words of Christ: “Will you even lay down your life for me? Verily, verily, I say to you: The rooster will not crow until you deny me three times” (Jn 13:38). The rooster crowed and Peter realizes that he has denied Christ three times. He, the leader of the apostles, he who found an honorable place in the eyes of Christ, he, Peter – the Rock, hesitated. However, Peter does not think, but acts. His crying, and regret for the actions he committed a moment ago, are a sign that he also loves Jesus. Peter did not sink as deep as Judas. Peter regrets his actions.

Two hesitations. Informative for us, and only one of them is an example. We are weak, even if we pull ourselves up like Peter. We must realize that in difficulties when our faith costs us something, our love for Christ is shown. It is not so bad to fall into sin as to remain in sin. Judas could not rise from him. He did not believe in the forgiveness of Christ, which Christ would surely have given him if he had come and asked. Christ never reproached Peter for his actions and betrayal, perhaps he only reminded him when, after his resurrection, he asked him three times: “Simon, son of John, do you love me…?” (Jn 21:15). And Peter wept again at the third answer: “Lord, you see everything, you know very well that I love you” (John 21:17). And Peter, who denied Christ, becomes the one who is supposed to lead his brothers. Peter is entrusted by Christ with primacy.

This means for us to always believe in Christ so that even in such moments when we hesitate when we commit betrayal of Jesus and his love, we do not sink so deeply and do not allow the thought that there is no forgiveness for us. After all, Lord Jesus said in the parable of the good shepherd that there will be greater joy in heaven over one who needs repentance than over ninety-nine righteous people. 

We are experiencing Holy Week or Holy Week. Yesterday’s memory of the Lord Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, when a cheering crowd with palms in their hands shouted: “Hosanna!” and greeted Jesus with enthusiasm. But this crowd soon changed their minds, and in Pilate’s court later cried, “Death, crucify him!”

We also change our thinking quickly. Jesus said: “No one has greater love than the one who lays down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13), and Jesus also lays down his life for his enemies. Our sins, weaknesses, and imperfections led Jesus to the act of redeeming humanity. For this, we should thank Jesus. When it is so self-evident that we can say thank you for a rendered service, it should be all the more true for our eternal salvation. The actions of Mary – Lazarus’ sister, when she anointed Jesus’ feet, should lead us to thank Jesus within ourselves. We have much to be thankful for. We know our weaknesses, mistakes, our mistakes, and falls. Let us kneel at the feet of Jesus and instead of the precious ointment that Mary used, let’s lay at the feet of Jesus our goodwill that we want to change our life. At the same time, let’s thank Jesus that he decided to do such a painful and important act for us, freely and willingly giving himself to the torturers only to erase our sins. Apologizing and giving thanks in this season of Lent is so honorable and necessary for each of us. Whoever has shown us friendly service in our daily life, whoever has helped us in need, we are grateful to him, and therefore we thank him as best we can. We realize that we humans are weak and often unstable. That is why we should thank and ask all the more. 

We can also be reminded of this idea by the comparison of the preacher Johann Tauler, who vividly points out what human errors can be used for A horse makes dung in the stable, and although it is clogging dirt, it has to be led with great effort to the field, where it grows from the fertilized earth grain. Believe me, it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the manure. Well, your dung is the shortcomings that you can neither remove nor postpone – so with the effort, you bring them to the field of God’s will in humility and meekness. Undoubtedly, a noble harvest will emerge from it.

This week, our place before the cross is on our knees… No one needs to be ashamed of this gesture, on the contrary, the more we love, the more this gesture means salvation and reward for us. We must not become a crowd that shouts, “Hosanna!” and immediately, “Death, crucify him!” Our effort must be to consciously and voluntarily walk towards our goal: Christ, and in this Lenten season thank him like Mary, sister of Lazarus.

But what does this mean? What is “my” will as opposed to “your” will? What is it that they are opposing here? The Father and the Son? Is the man Jesus and God alone in the Trinity? In no other place
Holy Scripture do we see inside the mystery of Jesus as deeply as in the prayer on the Mount of Olives? Therefore, no it is no coincidence that the efforts of the ancient Church to understand the person of Jesus reached their final form thanks to the reflections of the faith over the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.
At this point, we must look briefly at the Christology of the ancient Church to understand its concept of the interrelation of the divine and human will in the person of Jesus Christ. The Council of Nicaea (325) contributed to the clarification of the Christian understanding of God. The three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – are one, having a single divine “essence.” More than a hundred years after this first Council, the Council of Chalcedon (451) attempted to capture the interrelationship of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ in a formulation according to which in him the one person of the Son of God is “unmixed and undifferentiated form” includes and bears both natures – human and divine. Thus, the infinite distinction between God and man, between Creator and creature: the human being remains human, and the divine being remains divine.

The divine in Jesus did not swallow up or reduce him to humanity. His human being is still present, but at the same time contained in the divine person of the Logos. In the undiminished difference of natures, the term One Person expresses the radical unity with man into which God entered in Christ. This formulation – two natures and one person – originates in the timeless intuition of Pope Leo the Great, which immediately received enthusiastic assent on the part of the Council Fathers. It was, however, an intuition whose concrete meaning at that time had not yet been explored in depth. What does “naturalness” mean? Well, in particular: what does “person” mean? Since this was not yet clear to the will, several bishops after The Council of Chalcedon declared that they did not want to think like Aristotle, but rather like the fishermen. The whole formulation remained unclear. Therefore, the reception of the Council of Chalcedon had a very turbulent history and was marked by considerable struggle. In the end, there was such a division: only the Roman and Byzantine Churches accepted the Council and its formulation in its definitive form. Alexandria (Egypt) preferred to stick to the formulation of the “one divine nature” (monophysitism); in the East, Syria the notion of a person maintained a skeptical distance, because it seemed to undermine the real humanity of Jesus (Nestorianism). More powerful than concepts, however, were the types of religiosity that stood in opposition to each other and irreconcilably polarized this opposition by the force of religious feeling.

The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon remains for the Church of all times a binding orientation on the way to the mystery of Jesus Christ. We must reclaim it in the context of our thinking, in which the concepts of “nature” and “person” have taken on a different meaning than they had then. This effort of re-appropriation must go hand in hand with ecumenical dialogue, which must also be conducted with the pre-Chalcedonian churches, to bring about the lost unity in the center of our faith, which is the confession of God made man in Jesus Christ. In the great struggle that took place after the Council of Chalcedon, especially in the Byzantine area, it was essentially a question of the nature of Jesus, if there is only one divine person in him that includes both natures. Can this human nature, contained in a single divine person, exist in its specificity and authenticity? Is it not necessarily absorbed in divinity, at least in its highest layer, which is the will? This proclaims the last of the great Histological heresies, “monotheism”. In one person, monotheism maintains, there can be only one will.
A person with two wills would be schizophrenic. A person ultimately manifests himself in the will, and if there is only one person, it follows that there is only one will. In contrast, however, the question arises: What would be the man who had no human will of his own? Would a man without a bed, be a real man? In Jesus, did God become truly human if this man has no will? The great Byzantine theologian Maxi m Confesses no (f 662) elaborated the answer to this question in the context of the efforts to understand Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Above all, Maxim was a staunch opponent of raonothelitism: unity with the Logos does not cripple Jesus’ human
nature; it remains fully human. And human nature includes the will. But this inherent duality of human and divine will in Jesus cannot lead to the schizophrenia of a dual personality. Therefore, the nature of and the person must always be considered according to their specific ways of being. That is, there is a “natural will” of human nature in Jesus, but it is only, one “personal will” which incorporates the “natural will”.

People ask, “Did it have to happen?” Some will say it was fate, others will say it was ordained by God from eternity. Yes, God from eternity knows everything. This is also how we look at Caiaphas’ actions. After the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus gained many followers. Many Jews were present at the resurrection because they were to comfort Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus when Jesus came and manifested His power before their eyes. Even the high council was involved in this in their meeting because they are worried about their power, which none of them will say, but they want to turn their problem in a different direction. They are afraid that Jesus led an open rebellion against the Romans, and they destroy Jerusalem. It is a paradox that it was they who longed for such a revolutionary, that he would free them from the hated Romans.

It was Caiaphas, who was a high priest that year, who took advantage of this situation in the great city, he said: “You know nothing. You do not realize that it is better for you if one man dies for the people and the whole nation does not perish” (Jn. 11:49-50).

With bitter irony, the evangelist describes Caiaphas the high priest as the political leader of the Jewish nation. He observes with concern that Christ’s ministry is stirring up a movement unacceptable to the people, who may openly oppose him as well. He explains to the others what would eventually follow: They would lose their freedom, their temple, and their income. By the statement “you know nothing” with which he admonishes the undecided Great Council, he touches himself, for even he does not know that the death of Christ, which he seeks, will destroy the old Israel, its law and covenant, and thus a new Israel and a new covenant, or New Testament, will be established. We can say that Caiaphas at this point is unwittingly prophesying that Jesus will die not just for a nation but for all mankind, to gather the scattered sheep into one flock.

We know that Jesus was not a victim of chance and that his crucifixion and death were not mere execution, mistake, etc. Though they all thought they had a part in it, they did not think that this was the death that redeems, for which mankind through the prophets had cried and pleaded so much. We know that behind the actions of all those who were instrumental in the death of Jesus, whether it was Judas who betrayed, Caiaphas and Annas who demanded from Pilate the death of Christ, whether it was Pilate who pronounced the sentence and washed his hands, whether it was the deceived multitude in Pilate’s courtyard-these were all in the hands of God and were fulfilling that which is behind the words: He gave his Son as a ransom sacrifice for all. We also see that Jesus did not resist arrest or condemnation, and that was only because He had willingly accepted His condemnation and death long before these events began. The will of the Heavenly Father and the irrevocable consent of Christ made his execution on the cross a redemptive act. Everything was in the plan of God. And He used people for His redemptive mission as well. It is with this thought that we enter into next week, which we also call Holy Week because these events are still alive and relevant to us.

Some who have power, money, and fame in their hands, make themselves gods. However, their divinity quickly crumbles. Hitler, Stalin, and others acted like gods. They decided not only on things but also on human lives … and today? Who will reverently remember their name? Mankind feels that man cannot be God. And yet we believe in God the Creator and God the Judge.

The Gospel tells us how the Jews want to stone Jesus because he pretends to be God. We need to understand their actions. As a single nation, they believe in one God, whose coming they expect, whose coming the prophets predict. They believe in God, who will free them from the state which man got after insulting God. We must understand that the Jews often had to defend themselves against the surrounding nations even in the area of ​​belief in one God because the surrounding nations believed in polytheism – polytheism. We know from history that God punished the Jews in various ways, especially when they wanted to be like God. However, they do not understand Jesus’ words. They don’t even understand Jesus’ deeds and miracles, and that’s why they want to stone him. Peter answers Jesus’ question of whether they also want to leave him by saying: “Sir, and who would we go to? You have the words of eternal life. And we believed and recognized that you are God’s Holy One” (Jn 6:68-69). Peter’s confession here also says that they considered Christ to be “God’s Holy One”.

The evidence should serve us so that we too show our respect to Christ, give him honor, so that we believe in Christ, our Savior, and Redeemer. We not only subscribe to that teaching, but also implement it in our lives. We realize that all abilities, talents, and gifts we have received from God, and therefore we fight against pride, which is the basis of every open attack against God. Angels already wanted to be like God, so the devil and his followers shouted: “Nonserviam!” – “I will not serve!” We also see the pride in the grandparents in paradise. The tempter addresses them with the words: “… you will be like God… and they will know that they are naked” (Gn 3,5-7).

The desire to be God has led and will lead more than one person directly to crazy deeds, which sooner or later will fail, because being God does not belong to the creature, but to the Creator. We have convinced ourselves countless times that always after showing respect and paying tribute to God, our life is filled with a special power. Therefore, we feel that after each such encounter with God, we want to meet him again and pay our respects to him. On the contrary, after sin, we feel our defeat, pain, and disappointment. This is also a serious lesson for us in life.

When problems come into our lives, when the pride of life grabs us, when we desire power, fame, wealth without Jesus, or at the cost of betraying Jesus, let’s ask now to pray well then I believe in God