OF HEROES AND VILLAINS

On this day, Good Friday, the whole of Christendom wallows in a mixture of conflicting emotions: - love of, and mourning for, Jesus and his suffering and death, and extreme hatred of Judas Iscariot, the traitor.

Since time immemorial, scholars, philosophers and theologians have endlessly debated on whether Judas should indeed be condemned for what he did.  There is at least one Gospel truth that one may never assail.  I mean,  Jesus knew from the very beginning that Judas would betray him. Matthew 26:20 and John 6:64 had amply wrote about this. "When it was evening, while sat eating at a table with the Twelve, Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me!" And,  "I chose you, the Twelve, didn't I? Yet one of you is a devil. Then he spoke of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, as the one."

That said, and before anybody gets me wrong, I am not defending the treachery of Judas; merely positing that Judas' role as a villain had been clearly providential and that, not himself realizing it, Judas just didn't have the free will to go against.it.  And so, let there be enough reason for us to ask ourselves on this day of of the world's extreme sadness for Jesus equally providential passing:    "Had not Judas performed his luckless role, could there have been the Resurrection of Jesus and the Joyfulness of Easter, which we will in very due course commemorate?"

Incidentally -- pressed forward to our own times -- who could have ever imagined that former President Fidel Ramos and now Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile would turn villains to then President Marcos and end up as two of the principal heroes of Edsa 1?  I ask this without malice towards any one.