When Judas had left them, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and God will glorify him at once.”

Today’s reading follows the last supper and the moment where Jesus identifies Judas as His betrayer. Judas has just left, and Jesus says that it is now that the Son of Man is glorified. How is it that Jesus is glorified at the moment of His greatest betrayal. I like how Peter Kreeft comments on this passage, he says: “When we think of glory, we think of joy and light and beauty and triumph; and when we think of suffering and death, we think of misery and darkness and ugliness and failure and loss. Jesus seems to put everything upside down and backward.” And indeed He does invert everything.

If we consider what he is doing in His passion, the answer becomes more clear. God because He is good and just and loves us more than anything chose to suffer to save us. God is all powerful and can do anything He wants, but if He came down from heaven, destroyed the evil one, and forced us all to love Him, that would be a tyrannical act, it would turn us all into slaves and it would negate his goodness and His justice and His love. He wants us to love Him because of our free choice, not because He forced us to and that can only happen if we have the freedom to do so.

So instead He sent His son, as an offering to the Devil to ransom us away from an eternity of suffering in Hell. Jesus offered to suffer and die in exchange for all of the souls that were held by the devil as a result of their temptation and sin. The Devil accepted this offer, because he mistakenly thought that he was going to be able to be the master of Jesus in hell. But Jesus is God, and God cannot be held slave by of one of His own creation. So Satan’s pride blinded him to the folly of his greed, and he stupidly accepted a wager that He could not possibly win.

But from Jesus’ perspective the wager was everything. Because if He could suffer and die for us, He could save us. He wanted to make sure that as many of us as possible were included in that one saving act. Not only all that had died before, but everyone that would be born and die for the rest of time. And so it happened. The sacrifice on the cross, and the simple exchange of His life for ours, is the act that saves everyone and anyone that accepts the gift that God is offering us.

But what is more incredible is that Jesus is most glorified in His greatest suffering. The more people that accept the gift of salvation from Jesus, the more He is brutalized and punished. And the more our sins are poured out on him, in the form of His suffering and torture, the more he is glorified! He is glorified because His suffering means our redemption and salvation. And in the eyes of a loving father, there truly is no amount of pain or suffering that you are not willing to endure if it means your children will be safe, and protected from the evils of this world.

And that is what is happening in this moment. Jesus the Lord is recognizing that the time for His passion has come. Judas is going to go fetch the people that will carry out His torture and execution, and they will bring Him to the moment of His greatest triumph and the highest glory that any Father could do for His children. It is at this moment that He accepts this reality. But I dont think that He fully realized what suffering He would have to endure, until he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He began to feel the weight of all of the worlds sin being poured out upon Him. That weight caused him to sweat blood. But He would not know the full pain of man’s depravity until He spoke His last words on the cross and He said “forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.”

So what is the message for us today? I think it is that Jesus is asking us to accept His gift of Salvation, to change our lives in accordance with His teachings, and to offer our sins to Him in the sacraments of reconciliation and the eucharist, and to receive the healing salve, that is offered in His forgiveness. Fulton Sheen once said that “Jesus paid a price He did not owe, because we owed a debt that we could not pay.” And He still pays that price for you even today. All you have to do is give Him everything, let Him carry the weight of all your sins, and He will save you from the clutches of the evil one. And in your salvation, He will be even more glorified!

St. Augustine once wrote that: “The justification of the ungodly is something greater than the creation of heaven and earth, greater even than the creation of the angels.” Do you understand what that means? God is saying that your salvation, your rejection of sin, and turning to Him instead, is a greater thing than everything else He has ever made, and it is because everything He ever made was made to hopefully bring you to that moment. And if you do turn to Him, and reject the world, the flesh, and the devil, it will have made everything else that He has ever done worth it, because it will mean that He gets to spend eternity with you in Heaven.

T.S. Eliot said that living the christian life is: “a condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.” The simplicity is the giving and accepting of love, the cost is letting go of the world, its temptations, and our attachment to sin. It is actually a paradox when you think about it. We must let go of everything that this world is offering us, in the form of pleasure and power and greed, but the reward is more than everything, it is eternity with God in Heaven forever. It might seem impossible, but it is a simple choice. But I promise you the rewards outweighs the loss by a factor of infinity. So what will you choose? It is the most important decision you will ever make, so choose wisely, your eternity awaits.

Oh lord, help me to learn how to give up everything in exchange for eternity with you in Heaven forever.