The conspiracy against Jesus
1 The feast of Unleavened Bread which is called the Pass over, was now drawing near,
2 and the chief priests and the teachers of the Law wanted to kill Jesus. They were looking for a way to do this because they were afraid of the people.
3 Then Satan entered into Ju das, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve,
4 and he went off to discuss with the chief priests and the officers of the guard how to deliver Jesus to them.
5 They were delighted and agreed to give him money;
6 so he accepted, and from that time he waited for an opportunity to betray him without the people knowing.
7 Then came the feast of the Unleavened Bread in which the Passover lamb had to be sacri ficed.
8 So Jesus sent Peter and John saying, “Go and get everything ready for us to eat the Passover meal.”
9 They asked him, “Where do you want us to prepare it?”
10 And he said, “When you enter the city, a man will come to you carrying a jar of water. Follow him to the house he enters
11 and say to the owner: ‘The master asks: where is the room where I may take the Passover meal with my disciples?’
12 He will show you a large, furnished room upstairs, and there you will prepare for us.”
13 Peter and John went off and having found ev erything just as Jesus had told them, they prepared the Passover meal.
The supper of the Lord
14 When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table and the apostles with him.
15 And he said to them, “I was eager to eat this Passover with you before I suffer;
16 for, I tell you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
17 Then they passed him a cup and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves:
18 for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
19 Jesus also took bread, and after giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
20 And he did the same with the cup after eating, “This cup is the new cove nant, sealed in my blood which is poured out for you.
21 Yet the hand of the traitor is with me on the table.
22 Know that the Son of Man is going the way marked out for him. But alas for that one who betrays him!”
23 They began to ask one another which of them could do such a thing.
Last conversation with Jesus
24 They also began to argue among themselves which of them should be considered the most im portant.
25 And Jesus said, “The kings of the pagan nations rule over them as lords, and the most hard-hearted rulers claim the title, ‘Gracious Lord.’
26 But not so with you; let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as the servant.
27 For who is the greatest, he who sits at the table or he who serves? He who is seated, isn’t it? Yet I am among you as the one who serves.
28 You are the ones who have been with me and stood by me through my troubles;
29 be cause of this, just as the kingship has been given to me by my Father, so I give it to you.
30 You will eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones and govern the twelve tribes of Israel.
31 Simon, Simon, Satan has de mand ed to sift you like grain,
32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have recovered you shall strengthen your brothers.”
33 Then Peter said, “Lord, with you I am ready to go even to prison and death.”
34 But Jesus replied, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day before you have denied three times that you know me.”
35 Jesus also said to them, “When I sent you without purse or bag or sandals, were you short of anything?” They answered, “No.”
36 And Jesus said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and a bag as well. And if anyone is without a sword, let him sell his cloak to buy one.
37 For Scriptures says: He was numbered among criminals. These words had to be fulfilled in me, and now everything written about me is taking place.
38 Then they said, “See, Lord, here are two swords,” but he answered, “That is enough.”
Gethsemane
39 After this Jesus left to go as usual to Mount Olives and the disciples followed him.
40 When he came to the place, he told them, “Pray that you may not be put to the test.”
41 Then he went a little further, about a stone’s throw, and kneeling down he prayed,
42 “Father, if it is your will, remove this cup from me; still not my will but yours be done.”
43 And an angel from heaven ap peared to give him strength.
44 As he was in agony, he prayed even more earnestly and great drops of blood formed like sweat and fell to the ground.
45 When he rose from prayer, he went to his disciples but found them worn out with grief, and asleep.
46 And he said to them, “Why do you sleep? Get up and pray, so that you may not be put to the test.”
47 Jesus was still speaking when a group appeared and the man named Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him,
48 and Jesus said to him, “Did you need this kiss to betray the Son of Man?”
49 Those with Jesus seeing what would happen, said to him, “Master, shall we use the sword?”
50 And one of them struck the High Priest’s servant and cut off his right ear.
51 But Jesus stopped him, “No more of this.” He touched the man’s ear and healed him.
52 Then Jesus spoke to those coming against him, the chief priests, officers of the Temple and elders and he said to them, “Did you really set out against a robber? Do you need swords and clubs to arrest me?
53 Day after day I was among you teaching in the Temple and you did not arrest me. But this is the hour of the power of darkness; this is your hour.”
The trial of Jesus, Peter’s denial
54 Then they seized him and took him away, bringing him to the High Priest’s house. Peter followed at a distance.
55 A fire was kindled in the mid dle of the courtyard where peo ple gathered, and Peter sat among them.
56 A maidservant noticed him. Looking at him intently in the light of the fire, she exclaimed, “This man also was with him!”
57 But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.”
58 A little later someone who saw him said, “You are also one of them!” Peter replied, “My friend, I am not!”
59 After about an hour another as serted, “Surely this man was with him, for he is a Galilean.”
60 Again Peter denied, “My friend, I don’t know what you are talking about.” He had not finished saying this when a cock crowed.
61 The Lord turned around and looked at Peter and he remembered the word that the Lord had spoken, “Before the cock crows today you will have de nied me three times.”
62 Peter went outside, weeping bitterly.
63 Meanwhile the guards were mocking and beating Jesus.
64 They blindfolded him, struck him and then asked, “Who hit you? Tell us, pro phet.”
65 And they hurled many other insulting words at him.
66 At daybreak, the council of the elders of the people, among whom were the chief priests and the scribes, assembled again. Then they had Jesus brought before them, and they began questioning him:
67 “Tell us, are you the Christ?” Jesus replied, “You will not believe if I tell you,
68 and neither will you answer if I ask you.
69 Yet from now on the Son of Man will have his seat at the right hand of the Mighty God.”
70 In chorus they asked, “So you are the Son of God?” And Jesus said to them, “You are right, I am.”
71 Then they said, “What need have we of witnesses? We have heard it from his own lips.”
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Comments Luke, Chapter 22
• 22.7. Where do you want us to prepare it? This was the first preoccupation of pilgrims to Jerusalem: finding a house where they could eat the sacrificed lamb.
A man will come to you. Usually women carry the water jars, and so it would be easy to identify a man with a water jar. Jesus knew that Judas was betraying him, and did not want to indicate the place of the supper ahead of time: he could have been apprehended there. So he trusted a prophetic intuition: the Father had designated the place for the last supper. It was, in fact, the home of a rich man, a disciple of Jesus in Jerusalem. This may have been the house where the apostles gathered after Jesus’ death and where the Church started.
• 14. See commentary on Mark 14:12.
Jesus took his place at table, or rather as the Gospel says, “he reclined,” as was the custom at banquets of the well to do: guests would recline on sofas around the table.
It is very difficult to know whether this last supper of Jesus started with the meal of the passover lamb and concluded with the eucharist, or whether Jesus only celebrated the eucharist, without having shared the passover meal. In any case, the Gospel intends to teach us that the eucharist will be for the Church what the passover meal was for the people of Israel.
They passed him a cup. The person presiding at the passover meal would take four cups which he would bless and which the participants would pass around.
I will not drink of the grape of the vine (v. 18). Jesus recalled that, for the Jews, the passover meal was already an anticipated figure of the banquet of the Kingdom of God. On that night, the celebration took place for Jesus in a very special way.
This is my body. Is the consecrated bread the symbol of the body of Christ, or is it the body of Christ in fact? There have been great controversies between Catholics and Protes tants about this. Catholics understand that the bread is really the body of Christ; Protestants maintain that the bread does not contain the physical presence of the body of Christ and look upon it as a mere symbol. Both have tried to come to a mutual understanding.
The faith of the Church states that the consecrated bread is symbol and reality at the same time. The presence of the body of Christ is not symbolic but real, though not a material presence, as if we could say: “Jesus is here on the table.” The body of Christ is present, but through the sacramental sign of bread and wine, and it is present inasmuch as it is signified. In communion we receive the body of the “risen” Christ (it is another reason to think that it is not a material presence, but rather of another type, no less real, but different) in order to receive from him strength and life. Though his presence to the believer in communion is a mysterious and intimate reality, the objective of the Eucharist is not to make Jesus more present, but to renew and strengthen the communion (fellowship) between Jesus and those who share in the table of the Lord, making us at the same time more conscious of his divine overwhelming presence.
My blood which is poured out for you. Jesus gives us the meaning of his death: he will be the Servant of Yahweh promised by Isaiah (53:12), who takes upon himself the sins of a multitude. That is why in Matthew and Mark Jesus says: My blood poured out for a multitude. Let us say that, for the Jews, a multitude, or the many, does not exclude anyone. However, this multitude refers first to the chosen peo ple of Jesus: that is why we read here poured out for you, the same as in 1 Cor 11:24; Eph 5:25; Jn 17:19.
The new covenant: see commentary on Mark 14:12.
Do this in remembrance of me. With these words Jesus institutes the Eucharist as the church will celebrate it. In remembrance of me: not to remember a dead man. At the Passover the Jews remembered the intervention of God who had delivered them from Egypt; in the Eucharist, we remember the intervention of God who saved us through the sacrifice of his Son.
The parenthesis of vv. 19-20 includes words which are not in many ancient manuscripts and perhaps do not belong to Luke’s gospel.
• 24. After the narrative of the Last Supper (Mk 14:12), Luke brings out some memories of the conversation with which Jesus took leave of his apostles. Here he shows Jesus as alone and misunderstood by his own apostles on the eve of his death. They have not learned anything in so many months and at the end of the Last Supper, they only express their all-too-human concerns.
The apostles were vying for the first place in the Kingdom: what concept, then, did they still have of the Kingdom? During the supper Jesus had acted as the servant of the house (Jn 13:1).
Jesus does not get discouraged when he sees that the apostles are out of touch with his thoughts and desires, even when time is coming to an end for him. He has surrendered his life and his work to the Father: if he has seemingly failed, he knows that after his death his work will rise to new life along with him, and so he confirms his promises to his apostles.
You will sit… (v. 30). How hard it is for us to understand Jesus’ faithfulness to his own people. All that is his, he shares with those who have committed themselves to his work. The twelve tribes of Israel means the entire people of God. With this, Jesus designates all of us who come from many nations to accept the faith of the apostles.
Peter believes that since he is the head, he will be stronger than the others. Jesus, on the other hand, sees Peter’s future mission, and in spite of his fall, wills to give him a special grace, so that he will be able to strengthen the rest. Such is Jesus’ way of doing things: he saves what was lost and, having seen the incurable weakness of human nature in Peter, he uses him to give the Church a stability to which no other human society can aspire. Indeed, the continuity of the Church through the centuries is, in part, due to the popes, Peter’s successors.
At the end, Jesus uses some images to indicate that the crisis foretold so many times is at hand: the apostles do not really understand and they look for swords.
• 39. It appears that Jesus celebrated the Passover in a house at the southwest of the old town of Jerusalem. He went down the stepped street to what had been the stream of Tyropeon, went up the Ophel area, the old city of David, to go down to the Kidron torrent, almost always devoid of water. From there he must have taken a path to go up to the Mount of Olives. It was called that because its western slopes were covered with olive trees. Jesus went to a garden called Gethsemane, or “olive press.” This land may have belonged to one of the disciples of Jesus, since he went there many times (Jn 18:2).
He was in agony. Jesus certainly has felt, just as we have – and perhaps even more acutely – the horror of death. But he must also have been assailed by a despairing vision of the world of sin due to the presence of the all-holy Father. Should we want to understand something of what took place in those moments, we must learn about the testimonies of the great saints who, in their own way, also experienced this extremely difficult test.
Some of the ancient manuscripts of the Gospel do not have verses 43 and 44: probably they were taken out because many people were scandalized by this “weakness” of Christ.
An angel from heaven. At times the Bible speaks of an angel to indicate that God intervened in a mysterious way, by encouraging, teaching or pun ishing…This angel reminds us of the one who came to encourage Elijah (1 K 19:4). We must understand that God wished to give Jesus a special help to be able to endure this exceptional trial. There again we need the witness of the saints to understand better.
Drops of blood formed like sweat. This is a symptom understood by doctors, due both to anxiety and suffering.
The hour and the form of Jesus’ arrest were suited to evildoers driven by the Power of darkness. There are times when all hope and justice have apparently disappeared from the earth.
• 54. WHY DID THEY KILL HIM?
Regarding the two trials of Jesus, one religious, the other po litical, see commentary on Mark 14:53.
Jesus’ trial and condemnation to death were not very different from what happens to many Christian militants and martyrs. Merely preferring relationships with the poor and educating simple people so they can be free and responsible does not constitute a crime in any country, and yet, throughout the centuries, it has been enough to bring persecution onto many persons. We have already men tioned that Jesus preached in extremely difficult circumstances, since his nation was under the law of the Roman occupants, and any liberating message smacked of subversion.
Undoubtedly, those who condemned Jesus had plenty of reasons to hate him. However, the Gospel records that the accusations focused on the key points of his teaching. They condemned Jesus because he claimed to be divine: the Christ, the Son of God, the one who will sit at the right hand of God.
The chief priests of the time belonged to wealthy families who fought for their positions because it gave access to temple money. Annas and his sons (and his son-in-law Caiap has) are known to have ac ted with utter shame lessness, silencing protests with the sticks of their guards, who form ed an illegal militia. Here, they appear with the leaders of the Jews, or the Elders, who belong to the richest families.