The Price of a Slave

Today’s readings.

We find Jesus being sold by Judas today for thirty pieces of silver. This is not a random sum. In ancient Jewish law, it is the price set for a slave when an ox gores a male or female servant. And so the detail is deliberate: Christ is valued as a slave. Which is why Saint Paul can say that though he was in the form of God, he took on the form of a slave. What Jesu embraces freely in love is now confirmed in humiliation. But this descent is not loss of control since Christ moves toward the cross with resolve in freedom, even as Judas moves in secrecy and calculation. 

And in the end, what appears to be defeat becomes the turning point. For in his death, the tradition tells us, darkness overreaches—Satan takes what appears weak and finds that he has taken in God himself. And what can hold God? Death must give him back. In that moment, the deeper slavery is broken—not just the visible forms, but the interior ones: to sin, to desire, to the self turned inward. And so when St. Paul later calls us “slaves of Christ,” it is no longer a word of diminishment but of restoration. Because we all belong to something. The only question is whether what claims us leads us further into bondage or into freedom. Christ becomes a slave to set us free, and now invites us to belong to him, freely, so that in that belonging, we might finally become free.

Today’s Practice – Prayer:

Take a few minutes today in silence and ask yourself: What owns me? Let the question surface whatever it will: attachments, habits, desires. Don’t soften it. Then, one by one, place those before Christ and offer: Lord, I give this to you. I choose to belong to you.