It is always possible to make a right choice, even in the midst of many wrong ones. Judas Iscariot not only betrays Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, selling his friend out for thirty pieces of silver, but he also goes on to commit one of the gravest sins a Christian can commit—that is, suicide, as he hangs himself when he learns that Jesus will be crucified. However, Wright's poem shows Judas performing an act of compassion, behaving kindly even when he knows that it cannot benefit his soul. Judas knows that he will never be allowed into the kingdom of heaven after he dies, but he holds and comforts a beaten man nevertheless.

We can sympathize with even the most apparently sinful of people. By titling the poem "Saint Judas" when Judas was never sainted by the Catholic Church, and by showing him performing an act of goodness rather than the act of evil with which he is most commonly associated, Wright encourages the reader to empathize with and feel compassion for this damned man. Even having Judas himself narrate the poem, expressing his own feelings of despair and hopelessness, helps to compel readers to feel empathy for him rather than hatred or judgment.

We all contain the capacity to do evil and to do good. Even Judas, possibly the most criticized and condemned man in Christianity, has the capacity to do good, to be good. Judas may have betrayed Jesus, sacrificing his friend—and lord—for something as small as a bag of silver, but he also behaves compassionately toward a fellow human being when he knows that he can gain nothing by it. He is completely without hope of ever reaching heaven, and yet he rushes toward a suffering fellow, hoping to relieve his suffering, thus showing that Judas still possesses his humanity.