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The Question Each Disciple Asks
Where We Are
We are in the heart of Holy Week, holding the sacred weight of what these days demand. Palm Sunday's hosannas are a memory. We watched Judas Iscariot slip away to make his bargain while Mary poured out her perfume in love. Yesterday we sat at table and heard Jesus speak plainly of betrayal and denial. Today, Holy Wednesday, the Church pauses at the threshold before the Triduum. Isaiah's fourth Servant Song meets us here, and a question from Matthew's Gospel echoes across the centuries: Is it I, Lord?
The Word
Isaiah's fourth Servant Song opens with an image that cuts through centuries: the Servant wakes each morning to receive a word from God, listening like a disciple before he ever speaks. He is struck, spat upon, and shamed, yet he does not turn away, because God is his help. His confidence is not in his own endurance but in the Lord's vindication: "He is near who justifies me; who will contend with me?" (Isaiah 50:8, CPDV).
Matthew's Gospel shows us the terrible contrast. Judas Iscariot approaches the chief priests and negotiates thirty pieces of silver in exchange for Jesus. That night at supper, Jesus announces that one of them will betray him. Each disciple in turn asks, with what mixture of dread and self-examination we can only imagine, "Is it I, Lord?"
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Reflect
The Servant's secret is not stoicism. He is clearly suffering, his back struck, his beard pulled, his face covered in spit and shame. What sustains him is something far deeper: the practiced habit of listening to God before the world rushes in. Each morning he rises not to inventory his anxieties but to receive. To hear. To be taught.
The trajectory of Judas Iscariot shows us what happens when we stop listening. Scholars have long debated what drove him, whether avarice or disappointment or a twisted messianic hope. Matthew does not fully explain. What he shows us is the transaction: a price negotiated, a plan laid, a life reduced to calculation. The contrast with the Suffering Servant could not be starker. One man receives a word each morning. The other receives thirty coins.
Yet the most searching moment in today's reading is not Judas at all. It is the question each disciple asks around the table: "Is it I, Lord?" Each of them turns inward, honestly uncertain whether the capacity for betrayal might live inside of them. There is something holy in that honesty. Jesus does not rebuke them for asking. He is not surprised by their self-knowledge.
Holy Week has a way of stripping us down to that same question. We have walked with Jesus through palm branches, through arguments, through the rich intimacy of upper room conversations. Now he tells us that one of us will hand him over. That question hangs in the air today too.
Living It
The question "Is it I, Lord?" is not an invitation to wallow in guilt. It is an invitation to honesty. The disciples did not know with certainty whether they were capable of betrayal. They were right not to assume they were beyond it.
Where in your life have you been calculating rather than listening? Where have you let fear or ambition or hurt set a price on something that should have been given freely? The Suffering Servant shows us another way: morning by morning, an open ear. Before you try to solve the problems of your day, ask what God might be trying to give you in the quiet. That small act of receiving may be the heart of your discipleship.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, as Holy Week draws toward its deepest moment, we bring you our honest uncertainty. We do not want to betray you, but we know the capacity for it lives in us. Give us the Servant's ear, open each morning to your word before the noise of the world rushes in. Hold us close through these sacred days, and carry us into the light that waits beyond the darkness. Amen.
Today's reflection draws on Isaiah 50:4-9a and Matthew 26:14-25 (CPDV), according to the Ordo Lectionum Missae.
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