FROM an essay by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira:

“Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” Both faces were close to each other at the memorable moment of this infamous kiss and terrifying question. Giotto depicts this scene in another painting in the same chapel. With his low forehead, flabby flesh, grim look, vulgar nose, loathsomely soft and drooping lips, Judas reveals an inexpressible infamy in his whole being. Jesus-noble, infinitely superior, and possessing an ineffable moral loftiness-looks upon him with a gaze wherein a sparkle of love, rebuke, severity, and total repulsion can be found. Poor, miserable Judas, who did not want to open his soul to the love or fear which this gaze elicited and to which this doleful and pungent question invited him.

And, because his soul resisted every invitation to love and to fear, it sank from theft to deicide and from deicide to despair.

Please follow and like us: