Judas Iscariot’s desperation and suicide. If he had repented he could still be saved.

§ 605.1

Here is my very painful vision in these early hours of Passion Friday, as it appeared to me while I was saying the prayers of the Hour of Our Lady of Sorrows; in fact I had thought that spending the night before my Profession in the company of the Virgin of Seven Sorrows was the best preparation for the Profession.

§ 605.2

I see Judas. He is alone. He is dressed in light yellow with a red cord round his waist. My internal warner informs me that Jesus has been captured a short time ago and that Judas, who had run away after the arrest, is a prey to contrasting ideas. In fact the Iscariot looks like a furious wild beast hunted down by a pack of mastiffs. Every breath of wind rustling among leaves, any noise in the streets, the gurgling of a fountain make him start and turn round suspiciously and with terror, as if an executioner had caught up with him. He looks round with his head lowered, his neck twisted, rolling his eyes like one who wants to see but is afraid of seeing, and if a play of moonlight forms a shadow with a human appearance, he opens his eyes wide, jumps back, he becomes more livid than he normally is, he stops for a moment and then runs away headlong, retracing his steps, slipping away along other narrow streets, until another noise, another play of light makes him stop or run away in a different direction.

In his crazy running he goes towards the centre of the town. But the clamour of people makes him realise that he is near Caiaphas’ house, and then, pressing his head with his hands and stooping as if those shouts were stones lapidating him, he runs away. And in doing so he runs along a lane that takes him straight towards the house where the Supper was consumed. He becomes aware of that when he is in front of it, because there is a little fountain that trickles just there. The drops of water that fall into the small stone basin and the light whistle of the wind, that blowing along the narrow lane produces a kind of repressed groan, must sound to him like the tears and the moaning of the betrayed tortured Master. He covers his ears with his hands in order not to hear and runs away with his eyes closed in order not to see that door, which he had entered with the Master a few hours earlier, and from which he had come out to go and get the armed guards to arrest Him.

§ 605.3

While running so blindly, he bumps against a stray dog, the first dog I have seen since I had visions, a big grey hairy dog that moves to one side snarling, ready to hurl itself upon the disturber. Judas opens his eyes and meets the two phosphorescent ones staring at him, and he sees the white uncovered fangs that seem to be laughing in a diabolic manner. He gives a shriek of terror. The dog, that perhaps takes it for a cry of menace, rushes upon him and they both roll in the dust: Judas underneath, paralysed by fear, the dog on top of him. When the animal leaves the prey, perhaps considered unworthy of a struggle, Judas is bleeding because of two of three bites, and his mantle is badly tom.

One bite has injured Judas’ cheek, exactly where he kissed Jesus. His cheek is bleeding and the blood stains the neck of Judas’ yellowish garment. It forms a sort of collar of blood soaking the red cord that fastens the garment round the neck, making it even redder. Judas, touching his cheek with his hand and looking at the dog that is going away, he looks at it from the opening of a door, whispering: «Beelzebub!», and with a fresh shriek he runs away chased by the dog for some time. He runs as far as the little bridge near Gethsemane. Here, either because it was tired of chasing him or because it was rabid and the water turns it away, the dog abandons the prey and goes back snarling. Judas, who had rushed into the torrent to get stones to throw at the dog, when he sees it go away, looks around and realises that the water reaches half-way up his calves. Without bothering about his garments, which are getting wetter and wetter, he bends down as far as the water and drinks, as if he were parched by fever, and he washes his cheek that is bleeding and must be painful.

§ 605.4

In the light of daybreak he climbs out of the gravel-bed, on the other side, as if he were still afraid of the dog and did not dare to go back towards the town. He walks a few metres and finds himself at the entrance to the Garden of the Mount of Olives. He shouts: «No! No!» when he recognises the place. Then, I do not know through which irresistible force or through which satanic criminal sadism, he proceeds in that place. He looks for the place where Jesus was arrested. The earth of the path trampled on by many feet, the grass ruffled at a certain point and some blood on the ground, perhaps Malchus’, make him understand that there he pointed out the Innocent to the executioners.

He looks and looks… and then he utters a hoarse cry and jumps backwards. He shouts: «That blood, that blood!…» and he points it out… to whom? with his hand stretched out and his forefinger pointed to it. In the increasing light his face is ashen and ghastly. He looks like a madman. His eyes are wide open and shiny as if he were delirious, his hair, ruffled by his running and his terror, looks shaggy on his head, his cheek, which is swelling, twists his mouth in a grin. His tunic, torn, covered with blood, wet, muddy, because the dust that had stuck to the wet cloth has become mud, makes him look like a beggar. His mantle, which is also torn and muddy, hangs down from one shoulder like a rag, and he gets caught in it when, continuing to shout: «That blood, that blood!» he steps back, as if that blood had become a sea that rises and submerges.

Judas falls back and hurts the back of his head against a stone. He moans with pain and fear. «Who is it?» he shouts. He must have thought that somebody had made him fall to strike him. He turns round terrified. There is no one! He stands up. Blood is now dripping also at the back of his neck. The red circle widens on his garment. It does not fall to the ground^[16], because there is not much of it. His garment absorbs it. The red halter now seems to be already round his neck.

§ 605.5

He walks. He finds the traces of the little fire lit by Peter at the foot of an olive-tree. But he does not know that it is Peter’s work and he must think that Jesus was there. He shouts: «Away! Away!» and with both hands stretched out in front of him, he seems to be driving back a ghost that torments him. He runs away, and ends up just against the rock of the Agony.

By now daybreak is clear and one can see well and immediately. Judas sees Jesus’ mantle left folded on the rock. He recognises it. He wants to touch it. He is afraid. He stretches out his hand and withdraws it. He wants and does not want. But that mantle fascinates him. He moans: «No. No.» He then says: «Yes, by Satan! Yes. I want to touch it. I am not afraid! I am not afraid!» He says that he is not afraid, but his teeth are chattering with terror, and the noise made above his head by a branch of an olivetree, that is blown by the wind against the nearby trunk, makes him shout once again. And yet he makes an effort and gets hold of the mantle. And he laughs. The laughter of a madman, of a demon. A hysterical, broken, lugubrious, never ending laughter, because he has overcome his fear. And he says so: «You do not frighten me, Christ. I am no longer afraid. I was so much afraid of You, because I thought that You were a God and a strong man. Now You no longer frighten me, because You are not God. You are a poor madman, a weakling. You did not know how to defend Yourself. You did not reduce me to ashes, neither did You read betrayal in my heart. My fears!… What a fool! When You spoke, even yesterday evening, I thought You knew. But You knew nothing. It was my fear that gave the tone of prophecy to Your common words. You are nothing. You have allowed Yourself to be sold, pointed out, caught like a mouse in its hole. Your power! Your origin! Ha! Ha! Ha! Buffoon! Satan is the strong one! Stronger than You. He defeated You! Ha! Ha! Ha! The Prophet! The Messiah! The King of Israel! And You subjugated me for three years! With fear always in my heart! And I had to lie to deceive You subtly when I wanted to enjoy life! But even if I had stolen and fornicated without all the cunning I used to employ, You would not have done me anything. Faint-hearted! Fool! Coward! Take this! Take this! Take this! I was wrong in not doing to You what I am now doing to Your mantle to revenge myself for the time You kept me the slave of fear. Fear of a rabbit!… Take this! Here! Take this!»

§ 605.6

At each «take this!» Judas bites the cloth of the mantle and tries to tear it. He rumples it with his hands. But in doing so, he unfolds it and the stains wetting it appear. Judas stops in his fury. He stares at those stains. He touches them. He smells them. It is blood… He spreads out the whole mantle. The impression left by the two hands stained with blood, when Jesus pressed the cloth against His face, is clearly visible.

«Ah!… Blood! Blood! His… No!» Judas drops the mantle and looks around. Also on the rock, where Jesus leaned with His back when the angel comforted Him, there is a dark mark of blood that is clotting. «There!… There!… Blood! Blood!…» He lowers his eyes in order not to see, and he sees the grass all stained with the blood that has dropped on it. As it has been diluted by the dew, it looks as if it had just dripped. It is red and shines in the early sunshine. «No! No! No! I don’t want to see it! I cannot look at that blood! Help!» and he holds his throat with his hands and gropes about, as if he were drowning in a sea of blood. «Back! Back! Leave me! Leave me! Cursed! But this blood is a sea! It covers the Earth! The Earth! The Earth! And on the Earth there is no room for me, because I cannot look at that blood that covers it. I am the Cain of the Innocent!»

I think that the idea of suicide entered his heart at this moment. Judas’ face is frightening.

§ 605.7

He jumps from the terrace and runs away through the olivegrove without going back the way he came. He looks like one chased by wild beasts. He goes back to town. He wraps himself in his mantle as best he can and he tries to cover his wound and his face as much as possible.

He heads towards the Temple. But while going there, at a crossroad he finds himself in front of the rabble who are dragging Jesus to Pilate. He cannot withdraw, because other people press him from behind, as they flock to see. And, tall as he is, he dominates forcibly and sees. And he meets Jesus’ eyes… They exchange glances for a moment. Then Jesus, tied and beaten, passes by. And Judas falls on his back, as if he had fainted. The crowds trample on him pitilessly, and he does not react. He obviously prefers to be trodden on by the whole world, rather than meet those eyes.

§ 605.8

When the deicide pack has gone by with the Martyr, and the street is empty, he stands up again and runs to the Temple. He bumps against and almost overthrows a guard on duty at the gate of the enclosure. Other guards run to prevent the frantic man from entering. But like a furious bull, he routs them all. One of them, who clings to him to prevent him from going into the hall of the Sanhedrin, where they are all still gathered discussing, is seized by the throat, strangled and thrown down the three steps, if not dead, certainly at the point of death.

«I don’t want your money, may you be damned» he shouts, standing in the middle of the hall, just where Jesus was previously. He looks like a demon who has come out of hell. Bleeding, unkempt, in a state of delirious fury, slavering, his hands like claws, he shouts and seems to be barking, so shrill and hoarse is his howling voice. «<don’t want your money, you cursed ones. You have ruined me. You have made me commit the gravest sin. I am cursed like you! I have betrayed innocent Blood. May that Blood and my death fall upon you. Upon you… No! Ha!…» Judas sees the floor stained with blood. «Even here, is there blood even here? Everywhere! His blood is everywhere! But how much blood has the Lamb of God, to cover the whole Earth like this without dying? And I have shed it! Through your instigation. Cursed! May you be cursed forever! Cursed be these walls! Cursed be this profaned Temple! Cursed be the deicide Pontiff! Cursed be the unworthy priests, the false doctors, the hypocritical Pharisees, the cruel Judaeans, the sly scribes! May I be accursed! Curse me! Keep your money and may it strangle your souls in your throats, as the halter strangles me» and he throws the purse in Caiaphas’ teeth and goes away howling, while the coins tinkle spreading out on the floor after striking Caiaphas’ mouth and making it bleed.

No one dare stop him.

§ 605.9

He goes out. He runs along the streets. And he fatally meets with Jesus twice again, as He goes and comes back from Herod.

He departs from the town centre, taking the poorest lanes at random and he ends up again at the house of the Supper. It is all closed as if it were abandoned. He stops. He looks at it. «The Mother!» he whispers. «The Mother!…» He is undecided… «I have a mother as well! And I have killed a son of a mother!… And yet… I want to go in… To see that room again. There is no blood in there…»

He knocks at the door. He knocks again… and again… The mistress of the house comes to open and half-opens the door. Ajar… And seeing the man so agitated and altered beyond recognition, she utters a cry and tries to close the door again. But Judas opens it wide with a push of his shoulder and, knocking down the terrified woman, he goes in.

He runs towards the little door that lets into the Supper Room. He opens it and goes in. A beautiful sunshine enters through the wide-open windows. Judas breathes a sigh of relief. He proceeds. Everything is calm and silent here. The dishes are still as they were left. One understands that nobody has taken care of them. One might think that they are about to sit at the table.

Judas goes towards the table. He looks whether there is any wine in the amphorae. There is. He drinks greedily out of the amphora itself, lifting it with both hands. Then he sits down and rests his head on his arms folded on the table. He does not notice that he has sat just where Jesus was seated and that in front of him there is the chalice used for the Eucharist. He remains still for some time, until his panting after so much running calms down. He then looks up and sees the chalice. And he realises where he has sat down.

He stands up as if he were possessed. But the chalice enchants him. A little red wine is still in the bottom of it and the sun, shining on the metal (it looks like silver), inflames the liquid. «Blood! Blood! Blood also here! His Blood! His Blood!… “Do this in memory of Me!… Take this and drink it. This is My Blood… The Blood of the new testament that will be shed for you…”. Ha! I am cursed! It can no longer be shed for me to remit my sin. I do not ask to be forgiven, because He cannot forgive me. Away, away! There is no place where the Cain of God may find peace. Death! Death to me!…»

§ 605.10

He goes out. He finds himself in front of Mary, Who is standing at the door of the room where Jesus left Her. Hearing a noise, She has looked out, hoping perhaps to see John, who has been away such a long time. She looks as pale as if She had lost all Her blood. Grief has made Her eyes resemble even more those of Her Son. Judas meets those eyes that look at him with the same sorrowful conscious knowledge with which Jesus looked at him in the street, and uttering a frightened «Oh!» he leans against the wall.

«Judas!» says Mary, «Judas, why have you come?» The same words as Jesus’. And they are spoken with sad love. Judas remembers them and shouts. «Judas» repeats Mary «what have you done? To so much love have you replied by betraying?» Mary’s voice is a trembling caress.

Judas is about to run away. Mary calls him with a voice that should have converted a demon. «Judas! Judas! Stop! Stop! Listen! I am telling you in His name: repent, Judas. He forgives…» Judas has run away.

Mary’s voice, Her appearance, have been the coup de grace, or rather of disgrace, because he resists Her.

He goes away precipitately. He meets John who is going towards the house to get Mary. The sentence has been passed. Jesus is about to go to Calvary. It is time to take Mary to Her Son.

John recognises Judas, although there is little left of the handsome Judas of not long ago. «You here?» John says to him with obvious disgust. «You here? May you be cursed, you killer of the Son of God! The Master has been condemned. Rejoice, if you can. But get out of the way. I am going to get the Mother. Do not let Her, the other Victim of yours, meet you, you reptile.»

§ 605.11

Judas runs away. He has wrapped his head in the tatters of his mantle, leaving only a small opening for his eyes. People, the few people who are not near the Praetorium, avoid him, as if they saw a madman. And that is what he looks like.

He wanders about the country. Now and again the wind carries an echo of the clamour made by the crowds who follow Jesus cursing Him. Every time such echo reaches Judas, he howls like a jackal.

I think that he has really gone mad, because he continuously knocks his head against the low stone walls. Or he has become hydrophobic because every time he sees a liquid — water, milk carried in a vessel by a child, oil dripping from a goatskin — he howls and shouts: «Blood! Blood! His Blood!» He would like to drink at streams and fountains. But he cannot, because water seems blood to him, and he says so: «It’s blood! It’s blood! It is drowning me! It is burning me! I am on fire! He gave me His Blood yesterday, and it has become fire in me! May I be accursed, and You, too!»

§ 605.12

He goes up and down the hills around Jerusalem. And his eyes are irresistibly attracted towards Golgotha. And twice from afar he sees the procession wind uphill. He looks and howls.

It is now on the top. Judas also is on top of a little hill covered with olive-trees. He has gone in by opening a rustic paling, as if he were the owner or at least well acquainted with the place. I am under the impression that Judas did not have much consideration for other people’s property. Standing upright under an olive-tree on the edge of a terrace, he looks towards Golgotha. He sees the crosses being erected and he realises that Jesus has been crucified. He cannot bear to see or hear. But his mental derangement or an act of witchcraft by Satan make him see and hear as if he were on the top of Calvary.

He looks and looks like one bewitched. He struggles: «No! No! Don’t look at me. Don’t speak to me. I cannot bear it. Die, die, You cursed one! Let death close those eyes that frighten me, that mouth that curses me. But I also curse You. Because You did not save me.»

His face is so troubled that one cannot look at it. Two fine streams of slaver run down from his howling mouth. The cheek that was bitten is livid and swollen, and so his face looks twisted. His sticky hair, his very dark beard that has grown on his cheeks during these hours, make his face look dismal. And his eyes!… They roll, are squint and phosphorescent. The eyes of a real demon.

§ 605.13

He tears away from his waist the cord of thick red wool that encircles it three times. He tests its solidity by winding it round an olive-tree and pulling it with all his strength. It resists. It is solid.

He chooses a suitable olive-tree. Here it is. This one, protruding beyond the terrace with its ruffled foliage, is all right. He climbs on the tree. He fastens a noose solidly to the strongest branch hanging out over the empty space. He has already tied a slip-knot. He looks at Golgotha for the last time. He then puts his head into the slip-knot. He now seems to have two red necklaces round the bottom part of his neck. He sits on the terrace. Then with a jerk he lets himself slip into the empty space.

The knot squeezes his throat. He struggles for some moments. He rolls his eyes strangely, he becomes black with suffocation, he opens his mouth, the veins of his neck swell and become black. He kicks the air four or five times in his last convulsions. Then his mouth opens and his dark slobbery tongue hangs out, his eye-balls remain uncovered, protruding, showing the whitish globes stained with blood. The irides disappear in the upper part. He is dead.

The strong wind, that has risen with the impending storm, makes the macabre pendulum swing and whirl like a horrible spider hanging from the thread of a cobweb.

The vision ends thus. And I hope I shall soon forget all this, because I can assure you that it is a dreadful vision.

§ 605.14

Jesus says:

«Dreadful, but not useless. Too many people think that Judas did something of little importance. Some even go to the extent of saying that he is well deserving, because Redemption would not have taken place without him, and that he is therefore justified in the eyes of God.

I solemnly tell you that, if Hell did not already exist and was not perfect in its torments, it would have been created even more dreadful and eternal for Judas, because of all sinners and damned souls, he is the most damned and the biggest sinner, and throughout eternity there will be no mitigation of his sentence.

Remorse could have also saved him, if he had turned remorse into repentance. But he would not repent and, to the first crime of betrayal, still compatible because of the great mercy that is My loving weakness, he added blasphemy, resistance to the voices of Grace, that still wanted to speak to him through recollections, through terrors, through My Blood and My mantle, through My glances, through the traces of the institution of the Eucharist, through the words of My Mother.

He resisted everything. He wanted to resist. As he had wanted to betray. As he wanted to curse. As he wanted to commit suicide.

§ 605.15

It is one’s will that matters in things. Both in good and in evil.

When one falls without the will to follow, I forgive. Consider Peter. He denied Me. Why? Not even he knew why. Was Peter a coward? No. My Peter was not cowardly. Facing the cohort and the guards of the Temple he had dared to wound Malcus to defend Me, risking his own life thereby. He then ran away, without the will to do so. Then he denied Me, without the will to do it. Later he did remain and proceed on the bloody way of the Cross, on My Way, until he reached death on a cross. And then he bore witness to Me very efficiently, to the point of being killed because of his fearless faith. I defend My Peter. His bewilderment was the last one of his human nature. But his spiritual will was not present at that moment. Dulled by the weight of his humanity, it was asleep. When it awoke, it did not want to remain in sin, but it wanted to be perfect. I forgave him at once.

§ 605.16

Judas did not want. You say that he seemed mad and hydrophobic. He was so through satanic fury.

His terror in seeing the dog, a rare animal particularly in Jerusalem, was a consequence of the fact that, from time immemorial, that form was attributed to Satan to appear to men. In books of magic it is stated that one of the forms preferred by Satan to appear to men is that of a mysterious dog or cat or billy-goat. Judas, already a prey to terror brought about by his crime, being convinced that he belonged to Satan because of his crime, saw Satan in that stray animal.

He who is guilty, sees shadows of fear in everything. It is his conscience that creates them. Then Satan instigates such shadows, which might still bring a heart to repent, and turns them into horrible ghosts that Lead to despair. And despair leads to the last crime: suicide.

What is the use of throwing away the price of the betrayaL, when such deprivation is only the fruit of wrath and is not corroborated by a righteous will of repentance? Only in such case the act of divesting oneself of the fruits of evil deeds becomes meritorious. But he did not do that. A useless sacrifice.

§ 605.17

My Mother, and She was Grace that was speaking and My Treasurer that was granting forgiveness in My name, said to him: “Repent, Judas. He forgives…”.

Oh! I would have forgiven him! If he had only thrown himself at the feet of My Mother saying: “Mercy”, She, the Merciful Mother, would have picked him up as a wounded man, and on his satanic wounds, through which the Enemy had imbued him with the Crime, She would have shed Her tears that save and She would have brought him to Me, to the foot of the Cross, holding him by the hand, so that Satan might not snatch him and the disciples might not strike him, She would have brought him so that My Blood might fall first of all on him, the greatest of all sinners. And She would have been the admirable Priestess on Her altar, between Purity and Guilt, because She is the Mother of virgins and saints, but She is also the Mother of sinners.

But he did not want.

§ 605.18

Meditate on the power of free will, of which you are the absolute arbiters. Through it you can have Heaven or Hell. Meditate on what persisting in sin means.

The Crucified, He Who is holding His arms stretched out and nailed, to tell you that He loves you, and that He does not want and cannot strike you, because He loves you, and prefers to deprive Himself of the possibility of embracing you, His only sorrow in His being nailed to the cross, rather than have the freedom to punish you, Christ Crucified, the object of divine hope for those who repent and want to abandon sin, becomes for the unrepentant the object of such horror that makes them curse and be violent against themselves. They become the murderers of their spirits and bodies through their persistence in sin. And the sight of the Meek Saviour, Who allowed Himself to be sacrificed in the hope of saving them, takes the appearance of a horrifying ghost.

§ 605.19

Mary, you complained of this vision. But, My dear daughter, this is the Friday of Passion Week. You must suffer. To the sufferings you endure because of Mary’s sufferings and Mine, you must add your own, caused by the bitterness in seeing sinners remain sinners. That was our suffering. It must be yours. Mary suffered, and still suffers, because of that, as She suffered because of My tortures. So you must suffer that. Rest now. In three hours’ time you will be completely Mine and Mary’s. I bless you, sweet little violet of My passion and passion-flower of Mary.»