Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
March 29, 2015 Cycle B
by Rev. Jose Maria Cortes, F.S.C.E.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We began our celebration with the blessing of the palm branches. Then we listened to the proclamation of the Gospel describing Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. The crowds acclaimed Jesus enthusiastically. It was a joyful and triumphant moment. In ancient times, palm branches were a symbol of triumph and victory, peace and plenty.

Suddenly, the liturgy changed. We shift from the crowds who acclaimed the son of David to the crowds who asked for Jesus’ death: “Let him be crucified.” From a moment of popular acclamation, we passed to a moment of general rejection. We moved from the glory to the cross.

How did Jesus experience suffering? He gave his life as an act of love. The second reading says: “He emptied himself […] he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Jesus knew that his suffering was for our good and for the glory of the father. Through his suffering, he saved the world. Jesus showed us that suffering makes sense only if it is an act of love.

For Jesus, happiness and suffering are not in contradiction. The latter is necessary to achieve the former. Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem is not in contradiction with his crucifixion. Instead, the joyful triumphalism of the beginning anticipates the final glory to be revealed with the Resurrection of Christ.

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

In Jesus’ cry on the Cross, we can see a synthesis of all the passion suffered by him. We see in him a total identification with human experience. The Son of God feels the same experience that we have felt so many times. Who among us has never felt abandoned by God? Who among us has never felt the silence of God?

Pope Benedict wrote the following in his second book about Jesus: “He identifies himself […] with all who suffer under ‘God’s darkness’; he takes their cry, their anguish, all their helplessness upon himself—and in so doing he transforms it.”

“He transforms it.” In Jesus, all human suffering and anguish can be transformed. Jesus’ Cross opens our hearts to hope. Contemplating Jesus hanging on the Cross, we learn that silence and abandonment precede a great encounter.

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Jesus hanging on the Cross recites Psalm 22. This Psalm starts with the experience of abandonment but at the end says: “For he has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.” Jesus did not have time to say these words. These words would be said three days later.

Let us ask for the celebration of Holy Week to help us be certain that God hears our cry. As we start The Great Week, let us pray that these days may be a time for increasing our awareness of God’s infinite love, a time for understanding that we are really saved by the Cross of Our Lord.

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