The Holy Week Shadows of St. Joseph: Spy Wednesday

National Catholic Register, 31 March 2021

One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.

In some traditions today is called “Spy Wednesday” because the plot against Jesus has gathered a betrayer, a spy in the midst of the apostles. Judas is on the look out for an opportune time (cf. Luke 4:13). 

The price was thirty pieces of silver. In ancient Israel it was the amount that the master of a slave ought to be paid if his slave was killed by another’s ox (cf. Exodus 21:32). Jesus was sold for the equivalent of the damages paid for a dead slave. 

The Passover was at hand. The chief priests were eager to complete their plot against Jesus in haste; they did not want to provoke an uproar during the feast (cf. Mark 14:1-2). Some Jewish families were likely purchasing their Passover lambs when Judas went the chief priests and offered the Lamb of God for sale. 

It is Passover. The great feast is at hand.

The disciples approached Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, My appointed time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.’” (Matthew 26:17-18)

It will be the last Passover Jesus celebrates. It will be in Jerusalem. Jesus is familiar with the pilgrimage. Joseph and Mary “went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover” (Luke 2:41). Some of Jesus’s fondest childhood memories would be of those pilgrimages at Joseph’s side, gathering with others to live again the central events of the Exodus. The Jewish ritual of Passover assigns various tasks – prayers and solemn readings – to various men of the family. Joseph would have taken his part; perhaps the Boy Jesus first heard the Passover story from Joseph.

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