On Palm Sunday the
Church places before us the tale of two gospels.
The first gospel,
proclaimed at the beginning of Mass, tells of Jesus’ royal entry into Jerusalem
– as kingly an entry as anyone could want.
Here Jesus is welcomed with open arms, with palm branches waving in the
air, and the chant of the peoples ringing out in the streets, “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name
of the Lord.” Jesus is welcomed as a
victor and challenger of Roman authority – the palms being an ancient sign of military
victory. But there was a disturbing
indication that he would not be a military power – for he was seated on a lowly
donkey.
The second gospel details
Jesus’ passion. We have just recounted
it. It tells the devastating tale of his
betrayal, abandonment and death. This is
no glossy, sugar-coated story. Here the
very Son of God is stripped, beaten, and mocked. He bleeds.
He dies. Rather than a flight
from the suffering and violence of the world, instead the Savior immerses
himself in it. He becomes the suffering
servant who ‘does not turn away his face’ from insult and spitting, whose beard
is torn loose from his flesh.
Blessed Guerric of
Igny explores further the paradox of these two events recounted in today’s
gospels:
If today’s procession
and passion are considered together, in the one Jesus appears as sublime and
glorious, in the other as lowly and suffering.
The procession makes us think of the honor reserved for a king, whereas
the passion shows us the punishment due a thief.
In the
procession the people meet Jesus with palm branches, in the passion they slap
him in the face and strike his head with a rod.
In the one they
extol him with praises, in the other they heap insults upon him.
In the one they
compete to lay their clothes in his path, in the other he is stripped of his
own clothes.
In the one he is
mounted on an ass and accorded every mark of honor; in the other he hangs on
the wood of the cross, torn by whips, pierced with wounds, and abandoned by his
own.
Today is a Sunday
of juxtaposition. In this way we begin
the week that the Church refers to as ‘holy’.
We begin the countdown to the solemn events that closed the life of our
savior. At this Mass we commemorate the
glorious welcome of Jesus in our midst and our devastating betrayal of him into
the hands of sinners. It is not the Jews
who are to be held responsible for this but rather all of us who share in this
betrayal, because we all walk the path of sin and disobedience. It is for our sake that the king proclaimed
in the royal procession is tortured and put to death. It is for our sake that the king proclaimed
by the marvelous procession into Jerusalem is made to suffer humiliation and
sadistic cruelty. Today’s liturgy
reveals to us the scandal of God’s striking abandonment of his royal and divine
prerogative. Here is on display a divinity
that does not hesitate to turn upside down every expectation. To us, the fickle people, Jesus reveals
himself as the king, lauded as the Messiah on Sunday and put to death as a
criminal on Friday. Yet Jesus comes
forth nonetheless, knowing the miscarriage of justice that will snuff out his
life. He enters triumphant into the city
of Jerusalem, treading underfoot the palms laid in his path by those praising
his coming…soon to be trod underfoot himself by our own voices, yelling,
‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ This Sunday
lays bare the opposing extremes present in every human heart. We welcome the Savior, yet we cannot bear his
coming. We open our hearts, yet we betray
in the next breath. The words of Saint
Paul resonate here: “O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body
doomed to death? I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord.” If anything this
phrase encapsulates our attitude this Sunday.
What is left for
us to do on this Palm Sunday? Pope
Benedict relates a closing thought in this regard:
Before Christ –
the Fathers said – we must spread out our lives, ourselves, in an attitude of
gratitude and adoration. As we conclude, let us listen once again to the
words of one of these early Fathers, Saint Andrew, Bishop of Crete: “So it is
ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless
branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only
for a few brief hours. ... so let us spread
ourselves like coats under his feet ... let us offer not palm branches but
the prizes of victory to the conqueror of death. Today let us too give
voice with the children to that sacred chant, as we wave the spiritual branches
of our soul: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of
Israel’” (PG 97, 994). Amen!