Today, Palm Sunday, is the first day of the Holy Week, the high point of the Church’s year, climaxing in the Easter Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Two gospels are proclaimed during today’s liturgy. The first proclaimed during the procession with palms and recounts Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding a borrowed Donkey. He is greeted joyfully by the crowds, who spread their clothes and leafy branches on the road before him and acclaimed him with these words: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!... Hosanna in the highest!’. It is shocking a few days later these same crowds will shout out in unison, ‘Crucify him’.
Jesus’ passion and agonizing death by crucifixion was the final solution thought up by a world opposed to Jesus’ way. Jesus’ suffering and death shows us with startling clarity what happens to self-forgetful love in a world ruled by demons of hatred and violence. Jesus could have avoided the cross but only by turning aside from his mission of proclaiming and inaugurating the God’s reign of justice, peace and love. And this he could not and would not do. To reveal the full extent of God’s love for us, he had to endure suffering and death. The events we recall today represent the final phase and climax of Jesus’ life-giving mission of love.
In the story of Jesus’ passion and death, presented in greater details by all the evangelists, Jesus’ mission moves into a higher key, in which he allows himself to be acted upon rather than to act. For three years, he had acted: reaching out to people, especially the poor and marginalized, proclaiming a message of hope to those longing for liberation, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, and casting out demons. In the first phase of his mission, he was the one acting. Now in the final phase, he is the one being acted upon. We see him being betrayed, arrested, interrogated by Caiphas, Herold and Pilate, scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, forced to carry a cross, stripped of his garments and finally nailed and hanged on the cross. This is the supreme moment of his witness to the love of God.
As we prayerfully recall the memory of Jesus’ passion and death, let us profess our gratitude for the love that inspired Jesus to be ‘led like an innocent lamb to the slaughter’. Let us remember and express our solidarity with the many victims of violence in our world today and pray that we may be active witnesses to God’s transforming love in our violent and war-torn world.
Blessed Holy Week to you all
Fr. Henry