Today, on Holy Tuesday, the liturgy places the emphasis on the drama that is about to unfold and that will culminate in the crucifixion of Good Friday. “So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night” (Jn 13:30). It is always night when someone turns away from the One who is “Light from Light, true God from true God” (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed).

The sinner is the one who turns his back on the Lord in order to revolve around created things, without referring them to their Creator. Saint Augustine describes sin as “love of self even to the contempt of God.” In short, a betrayal. A falling away born of “the arrogance which makes us want to be liberated from God and left alone to ourselves, the arrogance which makes us think that we do not need his eternal love, but can be the masters of our own lives” (Benedict XVI). We can understand why Jesus, that night, was “deeply troubled” (Jn 13:21).

Fortunately, sin does not have the last word. That belongs to God’s mercy. But it presupposes a “change” on our part. A reversal of direction that means detaching ourselves from creatures in order to bind ourselves to God and thus rediscover authentic freedom. Yet let us not wait until we are disgusted with the false freedoms we have embraced before turning back to God. As the Jesuit Father Bourdaloue warned, “we would like to convert when we are tired of the world—or rather, when the world has grown tired of us.” Let us be wiser. Let us decide now. Holy Week is the fitting time.

On the Cross, Christ stretches out His arms to everyone. No one is excluded. Every repentant thief has a place in paradise—provided he changes his life and makes reparation, like the one in the Gospel: “And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal” (Lk 23:41).

Today, we are given to contemplate Jesus in the darkness of His Passion days. Darkness that will be over when He will exclaim: “It is finished” (Jn 19:30); as of that moment, Easter's light will flare up. In Easter's glowing night —in opposition to the darkness of the vigil of his death— Jesus' words will become true: “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” (Jn 13:31). We can indeed say that each step Jesus takes is a step from death to Life and it has a Paschal character, expressed by an attitude of total obedience to the Father: “Behold, I come to do your will.” (Heb 10:9); attitude corroborated by words, gestures and deeds which are opening the way to his glorification as the Son of God.

Today, we also contemplate the person of Judas, the traitor apostle. And his heart, full of evil intentions he is seeking to dissimulate; hypocritically, he is also trying to cover up the greediness that rules and blinds him, despite he is so close to him, who is the Light of the world. In spite of being surrounded by Light and exemplar unselfishness, for Judas “it was night” (Jn 13:30): thirty silver coins, “the devil's excrement” —as Papini qualified money— have dazzled and gagged him. Dominated by avidity, he betrays and sells Jesus, the most honored amongst honored men; but Judas experienced despair too, for money is not everything and it can definitely enslave us.

Finally, we consider Peter with attention and devotion. Everything in him is good will, love, generosity, simplicity, nobility... He is Judas' counterpoint. It is true that three times Peter denied Jesus, but his intentions were not mean; he just did it out of cowardice and human feebleness. “He denied him for the third time, and when Jesus Christ looks at him, he immediately cried, and bitterly he cried” (Saint Ambrose). Peter's remorse and repentance was sincere as shown by his excruciating pain full of love. This is why, Jesus afterwards, reaffirmed him in the vocation and in the mission He had prepared for him.