✔️ | 𝐛𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐛𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞; peaky blinders

･ ｡ﾟ°• ♔ •°───𝒙𝒙𝒗𝒊𝒗. 𝒋𝒖𝒅𝒂𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒏

soundtrack: sptfy.com/bbf29

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟐𝟗
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"Would you really betray me with a kiss?" —Luke 22:48

MAUNDY THURSDAY. 1910.

"THERE IS A MAN WE KNOW AS UNFORGIVABLE, brothers and sisters. There is a man whose name we do not say. So disgraced is he that Saint Jude became patron saint of lost causes after bearing such a similar name to this man. Is that the greatest punishment? To be untold? Or is the reason we do not say it worse—that we hate him so? I would like to talk to you about Judas Iscariot. Forgive me for saying his name. But I would like to talk to you, brothers and sisters, about the man we have forgotten. A child of God left behind. Judas was the son of Simon, he was once a boy. Think about your children. Do they have toys? Do they play games? Judas was a child with toys, friends, and favorite games. But we do not hear of that. The tragedy of the Bible is that it tells us so much, but it cannot tell us everything—the Good Book tells us first about Judas when he is a disciple of Christ, the Son of Man. We never hear about how he probably loved his mother and splashed in the river on hot days as a boy. How he befriended Christ and was kind to him. We only know Judas Iscariot as one thing: a traitor."

In the front pew of the parish, thirteen-year-old Beatrice Price swung her legs back and forth nervously. This was the first time her father had let her contribute writing to a homily—delivered in English, despite the backlash he might've received from the diocese if they cared enough to enforce the rules. It was a big day, Maundy Thursday, and despite the mounting pressure of her own words being spoken back to her in front of several hundred people, Bea—stupidly—could only stare at him.

The DeSilvio boy. With his ink-dark hair combed back neatly, and his olive skin golden under the morning light. He knelt in the pew across the aisle, and she could have sworn she caught him staring at her earlier, during the first reading, but he hadn't looked back since then. What if he thought that she was staring at him? What if she was disturbing him somehow by watching?

Bea willed herself to focus back on her father's words. "We are all made in God's image, my friends. Even Judas. He may have done something that we think is unforgivable, but we must not forget: it is not our job to pass punishment or mercy. We leave that to God." Just then, the DeSilvio boy darted his eyes over at her. Bea held his gaze. Then, the unthinkable: he smiled. Oh, Lord, she thought, her heart squeezing. That smile.

This wasn't the first time they played this game. Ever since she had started helping her father write his homilies last year, she had assumed a position in the first row of the church. It was, she supposed, for the sake of the message; she often caught his eyes on her when he reached the sentences she had spent hours refining, but she was growing older and selfish, and couldn't seem to stop her attention from drifting over to the beautiful boy with the dark brown eyes. They had done this every Sunday, and now that it was Lent, more often, but they had yet to speak beyond the mornings when she washed out the ciborium and chalices before mass began and delivered them to him and the other altar boys, both his brothers. One older, and one younger. She didn't even know their names, for God's sake, just that they were Gio's boys, and Gio owned the cafe across town.

"...and to betray him with a kiss," her father said. Bea startled, her foot bumping into the kneeler in front of her and making a noise that echoed across the church's cavernous walls. She bit down on her tongue punishingly and cringed, forcing her gaze straight ahead, where she found the suffering eyes of Christ staring back at her. Anywhere but across the aisle, where she was sure the DeSilvio boys would be laughing at her. Don't look. Don't look. Bea broke, her eyes sliding back over to the middle boy, who was, admittedly, smiling, but his eyes were kind. "That is an act of intimacy Jesus had not before known; a certain intertwining of love and hate. Does it matter, though? It was a marker of possession more than anything else. As if Judas took Jesus into his arms and said, You are my responsibility, my fault, my friend, and now my grief. And Jesus did not resist it, did not fight back. For he knew that he was put on Earth to be betrayed, to die, and to save us all. Judas, too, was only fulfilling what God had made him to be: a traitor."