At these barbed words from Judas, Thomas becomes almost beside himself with anger and rage and is about to lay hands on Judas with all his force. But I step over to Thomas—we are already nearly halfway to Capernaum—and say, ‘Brother, as long as you see Me calm and composed, remain as you can see Me to be if only you look toward Me often enough. Yes, if ever you see Me strike out, then spring quickly to My side and strike with all the strength you have. But now it is still far from necessary. Night remains night, whatever you may do, and Judas will remain Judas. He is not condemned to it as night is, which is the earth’s natural shadow; but if he wishes to remain Judas, let him remain so, while we remain what we are. The outcome will show how far he gets with his Judas.’
Thomas says, ‘But surely You could do this, Lord: send him away from You, or he will yet cause us all sorts of uproar. For he has a filthy, evil mouth.’
I say, ‘I did not tell him to come, and therefore I will not tell him to go either. But if he wants to leave as he came, we will not weep for him. You, however, keep away from him, for the two of you will do no good together. But forgive him everything, as I forgive him, and you will have a free heart.’
Thomas says, ‘As for forgiveness on my part, that is certainly in good order. For I have never borne him a grudge, although I have always known him as a man with whom hardly anyone could get along, not even the prophet John, with whom he often quarreled. But I must quite openly confess that I would prefer beyond comparison for him not to belong to our company.
When I was home the day before yesterday, I naturally told my acquaintances various things about Your deeds, and they could not marvel enough. But this also reached Judas’s ears, and who decided sooner than he to become Your disciple? For John’s teaching had not satisfied him, since John preached nothing but the strictest repentance and proclaimed a most severe judgment of God upon all who would not profess true repentance. For this reason there had also been frequent quarrels between him and John.
John was wholly repentance, and Judas its most direct opposite. He quite earnestly told John to his face that so-called repentance in sackcloth and ashes was the greatest folly of human life. A person should improve in deed, but not in sackcloth and ashes.
John had not actually prescribed sackcloth and ashes as things indispensable to true repentance. He had presented them in his addresses only in a figurative way, intending thereby to indicate the fully earnest improvement of a person who had become a servant of sins. But Judas, who wanted to know and understand everything better, would not accept this, insisting that in such important matters, on which people’s salvation depended, one must always express oneself in clear, understandable words.
In his view the prophets were all donkeys because they had spoken in images that could be interpreted however one wished; they alone had thereby corrupted the priests, the kings and the whole people. In short, to him every person, high or low, is a donkey if he does not think and act as he does. That is why I think it will not work with him in our company.’
I say, ‘My dear Thomas, I have long known what you have told Me. Nevertheless I tell you: if he wants to go, let him go; if he wants to stay, let him stay. I know much more about him, and even know what he will do to Me Myself. Yet he shall stay if he wishes to stay. For his soul is a devil and wants to learn wisdom from God, but such a disposition will bring this soul a poor gain. Now no more of it. An opportunity will soon arise when we will put a finger on his tooth. But meanwhile we have also reached the walls of Capernaum, and I see a Roman captain hurrying toward us from the city gate in the company of Colonel Cornelius and the royal man. There is another sick person to heal.’