Psychospiritual Insights on Betrayal and Fidelity – reflection from Palm Sunday Gospel Readings

Psychospiritual Insights on Betrayal and Fidelity – reflection from Palm Sunday Gospel Readings

The Palm Sunday Gospel readings , Luke 19:28-40 (reading for the procession with palms) and Luke 22:14-23:56 (reading for Mass),  cover three betrayals: Judas’ betrayal leading to the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus , Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus by denying his association with him to save himself, the people of Israel dissing and pushing Jesus to be executed shortly after praising him as their messianic king.  

All of these human phenomenon against Jesus offer important insights about our heart’s weakness, which allows us to defile a covenant.  Defilement of a covenant includes infidelity and any other forms of betrayal and cheating in relationships.  Adultery is certainly one of them.

I believe that these three betrayal issues depicted in the Palm Sunday Gospel readings reflect our reality of so many broken relationships and heartaches from infidelity.  

Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus to “sell” his master for 30 pieces of silver coins, Peter’s three-time denial of his association with Jesus to save his own neck, and the Jerusalem residents’ quick change of attitudes toward Jesus are projected to even today’s broken relationships, including adulteries and divorces. 

As a psychotherapist, as well as a pastoral counselor,  I treat individuals and couples, who are living in great psychospiritual pain as a result of their inabilities to practice fidelity and maintain relationships.  They are less resistant to, if not necessarily prone to,  temptations and gullibility.  

From a developmental psychopathology perspective, these psychological problems leading to painful relationship problems are indication of immature ego or an ego development problem.

In Judas’ case, he was tempted by material gain to betray Jesus.  As a result of this sinful behavior, Judas suffered a fatal consequence: committing suicide out of shame and guilt beyond recovery.  On the other hand, Peter also suffered from the heavy weight of guilt and slipped into a depressive condition with anger toward himself. But, luckily, Peter was able to recover from this painful consequence of his sin through reconciling with Jesus later on, as Jesus resurrected.  Peter’s recovery and new growth to become a man with unshakable faith in Jesus is one of many blessings that the Resurrection have brought.

Then, what about the people of Jerusalem, who once had thought of Jesus as the messianic king (i.e. Zechariah 9:9), waving palms to praise him, but turned into angry mob, shouting to crucify him?  What could have possibly led them to change their attitude to Jesus so quickly and so radically – from praise to angry hate? 

In my clinical opinion, as a mental health clinician, it is their weak conscience that easily let popular and powerful opinion to sway their view and act like “swing voters”.  The lack of strengths in their conscience made them quite gullible.  This problem is regarded as insufficient ego development, as well as immature faith development. 

In regard to the psychospiritual pain of a consequence of their condemnation of Jesus, the man, whom they once had thought to be the messianic king, to death, it is very difficult to assess and describe.  It is because their reaction to the death of Jesus, beating their breast (Luke 23:48), can be interpreted in multiple ways.  This behavior, as a consequence of their contribution to the killing of Jesus, could be their grief over the death of the man whom they once praised but quickly condemned. Or, it could be a sign of their remorse for taking a part of killing, especially realizing that the man whom they once thought as the messianic king was the divine man, reminded by the centurion, who pierced the body of Jesus. Or, their chest beating could be an indication of their continuing anger toward Jesus even he died. 

If the last possibility of meaning of their chest beating is the case, I suspect that this is what has been haunting the humanity throughout history.  Symbolically speaking, their unresolved anger and hate toward Jesus has been infecting the humanity with deception, betrayals and breaches of trust - even to a point of producing so many philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, to see the human nature as evil.  

To put this in the Jungian psychological concept of collective unconscious, all human sufferings, resulting from our own sinful thought and behaviors, can be projection of inescapable transgenerational consequences of behaviors like the humanity’s betrayal of Christ, symbolized with the condemnation of Jesus by the people of Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago.  Some of those who are more inclined to the Scriptures argue that it is due to continuing consequences of Cain murdering his brother, Abel, out of jealousy, while others assert that all our problems can be traced back to Original Sin committed by Adam and Eve. 

Now a curious question is – what could have possibly pushed the people of Jerusalem from believing Jesus as their messianic king to a man to be condemned so quickly? 

In order to understand this, the Gospel reading of Saturday before Palm Sunday must be consulted.

The Gospel reading for the Saturday is from John 11:45-56. This reading describes the pretext of the situation we reflect during Holy Week. 

As the time of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, which corresponds to Palm Sunday, marking the beginning of Holy Week,  drew near, the Sanhedrin decided to kill Jesus upon finding him in Jerusalem.  The Chief Priest of the year, Caiaphas, offered a plausible justification for this plot: conspiring the Roman colonial authority, Governor Pilate, and persuading the gullible people of Jerusalem,  to believe that killing Jesus would mean the peace of the Roman Empire and saving the Jewish people and their nation from the Romans.

Caiaphas said, “It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish” (John 11:50), in rationalizing to conspire the Romans to execute Jesus as a dangerous man to the Roman Empire and to conspire his own people, the people of Jerusalem (Daughter of Zion) to believe that Jesus would have to die so that the Romans would not punish them.   The fearful thought that Caiaphas implanted the people of Jerusalem to turn them into angry mob is: If the Roman colonial authority is convinced that Jesus, a Jewish, is dangerous to the Roman Empire, then, it would be either Jesus would be condemned to die or all Jewish people and Jewish nation (though it was a Roman colonial province at that time) could perish by the hands of the Romans. 

The Sanhedrin long wanted to kill Jesus as his existence was threat to their religious authority. But, because they were under the Roman colonial rule, they did not have their own administrative sovereignty. Thus, they could not carry out an execution of their own criminal and heretic.  Such administrative tasks must be approved by and carried out by the Roman colonial authority. So, when the Pharisees tried to kill an adulterous woman in their attempt to trap Jesus (John 8:1-11, Gospel reading from the 5^th Sunday of Lent), they were actually in violation of the Roman law because only the Roman authority could carry out an execution – though such an execution was in the Jewish religious law (the Mosaic Law).

The Sanhedrin’s conspiracy to the Roman authority triggered their “national security” alarm and led to execute Jesus.  Their conspiracy to the people of Jerusalem threw them into intense fear of their own lives, because portraying Jesus as a threat to the Roman colonizers would anger the Roman authority to condemn them. This fear quickly prompted them to hate Jesus.  This shows how people can quickly change with fear-invoking conspiracy propaganda. 

It is really human weakness to compromise our promises and pledges of our loyalty and fidelity to someone with such fear-inducing factors.  Likewise, when their own lives are under threat, even faithful people have apostatized out of fear of losing their own lives.  The radical shift of attitudes and behaviors of the people of Jerusalem in Palm Sunday’s Gospel readings follows a similar psychological pattern of those who denounce their faith to avoid martyrdom.

This psychospiritual insight from the Gospel readings of Palm Sunday offers a blunt reminder that our weak heart is susceptible to greed, as in the case of Judah’s betrayal, and easily let fear clouds our promise of fidelity to and positive regard of a person, as seen in Peter and the people of Jerusalem. 

A psychospiritual remedy to this human problem is reconciliation as Peter did with Jesus upon the Resurrection.  Even a person we betrayed has already died, it is still reconcilable with this person and heal ourselves to become better persons, who are more resistant to temptation and fear. 

What is behind the kind of fear that leads to apostasy and betrayal is our narcissistic disposition.  In order to control our narcissistic tendency, we must regularly examine our own heart and soul through psychospiritual disciplines, such as the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In fact, I find Buddhism spirituality, especially Zen Buddhism’s self-examining discipline to keep our ego in check, is also helpful to enhance the benefits of Christian spiritual discipline in overcoming influences of our narcissistic disposition, a root of our sinful actions. 

As we experience the climax of Paschal Mystery during Holy Week, let us, once again, inspect our own heart and soul, for hidden narcissistic tendency factors, through the aforementioned psychospiritual disciplines and resolve the problem through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in order to celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord.