“Take out a $20 bill and give it a good, long look,” requests Father Jerry in today’s homily. “It can’t provide comfort. It can’t make someone smile. It can’t feed the poor — without you. You are the one who brings life to money. You are the one who determines its value. But is that what is happening in your own relationship with money? Who is in charge? You or the $20 bill?”

The cold, horrifying phrase in today’s Gospel — 30 pieces of silver — confronts us with our own selling out of what is good in our life, for the sake of the silver that perishes over time… It is the silver we possess that in fact possesses us.