Certainly influenced by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, we have learned that Jesus Christ was born on 25^th December of year 1 (One) of the Christian era, and that he died at thirty-three years of age, after a three-year ministry. This count, through the hourglass of time; would have been established by the monk who lived in Rome between the years 500 and 545 and was named Dionysius the Small; from the hypothetical birth date of Christ, replacing the previous method where it was made from the foundation of Rome, still five hundred years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

According to historians, the monk Dionysius would have translated several ecclesiastical works from Greek into Latin and produced a kind of table with the date of Easter in a sequence of years. The term "Christian Era" would have been coined by him to designate the years after 753 years from the founding of Rome.

For Ivan René Franzolim, there are strong indications that Jesus must have been born in the 749^th  year after the foundation of Rome, so four years earlier than that which had been attributed by the monk Dionysius; thus the month and day of His coming into the world is unknown. It is believed that it was the Emperor Constantine I “the Great”, who reigned from 306-337 and who, in 336 ruled that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on 25^th December across the whole Roman Empire, taking advantage of the celebration of the winter Solstice in the East and the rebirth of the sun in the Mediterranean. Officially, this date as dies natalis was determined by Father Julius I, who was pope between 337 and 352.

Combining historical information to that provided by the spirit author Emmanuel, and which are found in the book "Two Thousand Years Ago", psychographed by Chico Xavier, one can conclude that it is possible that Jesus died on the afternoon of 3^rd April, a Friday, in the year 33, at the age of thirty-six or thirty-seven, and His ministry took place from year 28 to year 33. So in this year of 2013, when we rewrite this article, 1980 years have passed since the return of the Master of Nazareth to the Spirit World. 

Judas Iscariot - Humanity, especially followers of Catholicism; during these two thousand or so years; recalls yearly the occasion of the "holy week"; the scourge, the torture, the trial and death of Jesus; a morbid, sadistic and tragic repetition, showing a defeated, vanquished, languid Christ. During these holy days so called by Catholicism, men in mock piety, bemoan the tortures inflicted on Jesus.  Here it is appropriate to recall a ballad written by Octávio Serrano Caumo quoted by him in his excellent article "Jesus Died to Save us", published in the "International Journal of Spiritism", edition March 2008: In his sadism that amazes,  man always does this, on every holy week , kills Jesus Christ once again.On this same occasion, in a preposterous nonsense, using a wickedness that clashes with the teachings of the Divine Master, another personality is remembered. Not in such falsely pious manner, but with true scorn, with authentic scorn, with genuine derision and real vitriol. This personality is Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve Disciples of Primitive Christianity, replaced after his suicide by the Apostle Matthias. We all know the way he is remembered. 

Not much is known of the genealogy of Judas Iscariot. His demeaning behaviour towards Jesus may be the reason for the Evangelists to refer to him so little.

According to the Jewish historian Josephus (37-103 d. C.), the nickname Iscariot stems from Carioth or Keriote, hometown of that Apostle. There are historical records that Judas Iscariot would have been the treasurer of the primitive Christian community, because he was a skilled marketeer. It is also known that Iscariot was an intelligent, loving and restless character.

After all, what motivated Judas to fail, betraying the Master? Was it his ambition for power or was a religious-political idealism? Or was it just pride and envy? These are questions that remain to this day without a safe, conclusive answer, and everything remains in the field of conjectures of historians. 

The explanation given by Judas - In an interview with Humberto de Campos, in his book "Chronicles Beyond the Tomb", Judas reveals that he was in love with the socialist ideas of Jesus, considering Him the New King of the Jews, both by His divine magnetism, by the psychic phenomena he practiced, and by His word of clarification. Judas says that he saw in politics and popular revolt the only instrument which could facilitate the release of the Jews, as he was hostile to Roman domination. In parallel, he considered Jesus a serious obstacle to his desire to come to power, given that Jesus had his option for the poor and humble, rejecting command and wealth. Although he deeply loved the Son of Mary, his ambition and his desire to hasten the victory made him devise the plan that culminated in the crucifixion and all that we know of Martyrdom.

In the written work entitled "The Four Gospels" one can find two messages from Judas himself and one of the four evangelists, all by then already in the Spiritual realm and being guided or assisted by the Apostles. Such messages are signed jointly by Joseph of Arimathea and Simon of Cyrene, which bring clarifications about the betrayal. In the second message transmitted by Iscariot he thus expresses:"Oh! How great is this God who allows that the guilty child finds in his own unworthiness, the fulcrum that will help him to rise to perfection. Oh! how good is He who is always ready to forgive those who sincerely repent, who thinks with His beneficent hands the wounds of our guilty hearts, who pours in them the balm of hope and healing with the aid of atonement! "

At the end of the messages, the Evangelists add: "(...) Judas is today a regenerated Spirit in the crucible of repentance, of remorse, of atonement, of reincarnation and of progress. He has become one of the humble and active helpers, devoted to Christ. This example shows that you must never repel any of your brothers and even less, exclude him from the peace of the Lord. " 

A message from Judas – We will find another touching message from Judas in the book "Life and Acts of the Apostles" by Cairbar Schutel. Such communication was received on September 12, 1916 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, through mediumship, and proven by a clairvoyant, who said he had seen in the instant of transmission "a man with a beard and black hair, wearing white robes, surrounded by a large halo of light-blue light that surrounded another light halo of a velvety dark-blue. Around the Spirit and scattered, there were floating flakes of green light, making the effect of the apparation stunning."  Because it is a beautiful prayer of praise to God and Jesus-Christ, we reproduce it in full:

"Judas, my good friends, returns today to the world to declare before men the truths that have been inspired in him by Our Lord Jesus Christ - the Great and Beloved Master –whom, in a moment of blindness, darkness, and extreme weakness, he betrayed, selling him to the enemies.

Jesus, my good friends, the Messiah, the one sent by God to save the world where you live today, has already forgiven Judas Iscariot’s weakness and blindness. God, in His infinite mercy, granted by the mouth of His beloved Son, pardons the one who was once an unfaithful traitor, perjurer, a false and criminal disciple of the Messiah; and has never ceased to mourn and sympathize with the weakness and misery of his disciple.

I come, my good friends, in the name of my Beloved Master - Saviour of the World – to tell you something that interests you. I attend to your presence in order to restore the perverted truth, distorted by men interested in conserving the path of error and falsehood. I stand before you, my good friends, to confess gratefully for the immense evidences of love that were given to me by God and our Lord Jesus Christ. " 

Judas recognizes his mistakes - "I appear here before you, my beloved brethren and companions in order to atone for the mistakes that I practiced and, at the same time chanting hymns to the Infinite Wisdom and immaculate purity of this admirable Master, the incomparable goodness of this heart all made of sweetness and love! I come to sing hosannas to the sublime wisdom of the Creator and erect a prayer, in which all of you shall accompany me, because in this prayer we will ascend to the Father in Heaven and Jesus, who, during this time, extend his merciful sight on this backward planet, a world of atonement and suffering, tears and pain.

Repeat with me, my dear brothers: 'Jesus, our Saviour, Son of God and Sublime Light that lightens our path to guide us on earth and in Eternity! Lord, here are Your children, headed by one who deeply erred in the World, the greatest of all criminals who trod the surface of this planet, here we all are, Lord, having before us the most perfidious and faithless of Thy disciples and here we find ourselves standing up with the weakest criminal of your sons - Judas Iscariot! We, Lord, are also weak, and have practiced great mistakes, immense guilt weighs upon us, major sins require us to bend the forehead before Thee, Lord! We have, Jesus, our soul covered with sores, our hearts poisoned by the most impure feelings that have fed it; we feel our spirit battered by reviewing our spiritual past, full of crimes and serious misconducts. We are, Lord, still slaves to matter, feeling the entrails devoured by sinful desires, the soul trapped, chained to matter that retains it to the surface of the Earth, where it cannot become unattached for the bright regions without firstly purging itself of the impurities and the blemishes that sins have left on it and where vices have produced deep grooves, the miseries of the flesh launched traces which will hardly be erased! We have good Jesus, the hands painted with the blood of our brothers, the feet full of putrid mud of the dungeons and repugnant middens where we walked for a long time;  we have also conserved in the hands the tarnishes of the currency in exchange for that which we sold our conscience, we betrayed our brethren, we still keep on the lips the signals of low moral principles , the impurity of the passions that we feed into our hearts; we bring stamped on the forehead the stigmata of our vileness, of our decay, misery and prostitution to which we indulge in life; we retain in the eyes traces of our cruelties, the brightness of the pleasures and criminal delights during this earthly experience we have had. " 

The prayer continues - "Our body, Lord, is the book in which the written history of our abuses and our transgressions is found. Our souls, Jesus, are the mirror in which all our attacks on the laws of God and all violations of Thy Gospel are reflected in this moment. Our consciousness is, at this time, the shroud where Thy effigy is stamped, but so faintly that we hardly recognize it.

Lord Jesus! Dear and beloved Master! All our sins are found engraved in our spirits, all our faults are drawn in our conscience, which accuses us before Thee and Thy Father!

Our faults are large, our sins immense, our mistakes infinite, but in Thy goodness there is always place for all pardons, in Thy soul there are large reserves of mercy and tolerance, in Thy immeasurable heart there is a constant overflow of piety and love for those who suffer, who groan and cry, the weak, the unfortunate and the sinners, like us!

Therefore, good Jesus receive this prayer we offer you and which is uttered by the most impure lips that have ever existed on earth, dictated by the darkest conscience that has throbbed in a human being’s hand, drawn by the most criminal hand that has ever existed on this planet; a prayer born of the most guilty soul known so far in this world, the weakest and most criminal spirit of all those who have incarnated on Earth. Lord, Good Jesus, accept the prayer that Judas, the traitor of yesterday, the false and perfidious from other times, asks us to recite at this moment in Your presence so that we, like him, achieve our forgiveness and deserve of Thy goodness the grace to receive from Thy Father the same light and the same peace that He gave to the most cruel, the most infamous criminal and of His children! Jesus, listen to our prayer and give us what you gave Judas for the evil he caused You, for the betrayal he practiced against Thy divine person, for the outrage he inflicted upon Thee, in Thy most painful moment of Your life  of Missionary, the Redeemer, the Saviour of the world and the Son of God! " 

Judge not, Lamennais says - "You, you had in Thy soul  greatness, sweetness and love to forgive this false and perjured disciple; Lord, forgive us too, whose errors, whose faults, crimes and sins are very far away from the crime and sin of him who if before us, in this time of grief and pain, to give thanks to the infinite mercy of God and the immense and inexhaustible fountain of sweetness, tenderness, purity, immense love - Jesus’ heart!

Forgive us, Lord! Save us, Jesus. "

I will say  too:

"My Jesus! My Saviour! If I earned Your forgiveness and Your mercy, my brothers may also deserve them because before Judas, all humanity, with all its crimes, their sins and their miseries, is holy, innocent as the most innocent little children who play on the surface of the Earth! Forgive mankind, then, Lord, as You have forgiven the greatest of traitors. "

The unfair trial that we still make towards him today as well as the diatribes that we, who called ourselves Christians, have launched against Judas Iscariot, a criminal abject from yesterday and today certainly a member of the heavenly phalanges of purified Spirits, should be ashamed, because we are as much as or even more, offenders before the divine laws than he was in those past times of his earthly life.

We should remind ourselves daily of an extract from a message left by the Spirit Lamennais, transmitted in Paris in 1862. This message is in Chapter 11, item 14, of "The Gospel According to Spiritism" by Allan Kardec, "Judge not! Judge not, my dear friends, because the judgment that ye yourselves will apply even more severely, and have need of indulgence to commit sins unceasingly. Know ye not that there are many actions that are crimes in the eyes of the God of purity, and that the world considers as even slight faults? "

Sources: 

Article "From Pride to Humility: Judas and Forgiveness," by Roosevelt Pinto Sampaio, found in the magazine "The Reformer" September 1999.

"Life and Acts of the Apostles" by Cairbar Schutel.

"Two Thousand Years", by the Spirit author Emmanuel and mediumship of Chico Xavier.

"The Gospel According to Spiritism" by Allan Kardec.