Sunday, April 17, 2011

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Link to Mass Readings: http://www.usccb.org/nab/041711.shtml

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

Palm Sunday is the most bittersweet Sunday. There is so much potential for glory: Jesus rides into Jerusalem to the crowd shouting “Hosanna,” and all the people spread their cloaks on the ground and palm branches before Him. Yet even at the height of His earthly glory, the people still do not understand who He is. They say: “This is Jesus the prophet,” when they should be saying: “This is God who walks among us.”

This is the darkest Sunday, when we re-enact the Lord’s Passion at Mass. No other time in Scripture has sin been so deliberate as when the crowd condemns Jesus. They shouted: “Let him be crucified!” and “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” For something to be a sin, it has to be deliberately done and with knowledge of what is being done. When the Passion is re-enacted, and we say those words along with the crowd 2,000 years ago, we show our participation in the crucifixion of Jesus. The tragedy we celebrate today is not one we are isolated from; it was sin that caused Jesus to be crucified, and we all share in the guilt because we all have sinned.

How alone must Jesus have been. Last week we read that the disciples were fearful to return to Jerusalem because they knew their lives would be in danger. But today we don’t see that, and in fact the disciples fall asleep when Jesus is at his most troubled. Maybe they were fooled by the glory shown to Jesus when He entered the holy city. But Jesus knows exactly what He is riding towards as He enters the city, He knows the betrayals of Judas and the rest of His disciples are coming, the pain and suffering He will have to endure. For three years God gave Him disciples to walk with Him and share in His ministry; but at the end, when everything is at its hardest, God strips everything away from Jesus, down to the very clothes He is wearing. All this so that what was prophesied in Scripture might come to pass.

Even Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” I’ve heard people teach on that moment, that Jesus is quoting one of the Psalms, and while that Psalm starts out with the speaker in despair, it ends with the glory of God. And that’s true. But at the same time, Jesus is the one who has just been scourged, beaten, humiliated, tired, betrayed, abandoned, crucified, and left to die. Though He may not be despairing, and trust God with all His heart and soul, it can still be a cry of pain and hurt. It may be, “I know this had to happen, but did it have to be this bad?”

Who hasn’t felt the same? Even for us who believe, it is hard to deal with pain. When we suffer we feel alone even if we know that God is with us. Sometimes that is cold comfort. Even Jesus was afraid to suffer, and in the garden prayed that if His suffering could be spared then let it be so. But God’s will be done. Always. And God’s will is greater than we can imagine. As low as suffering and pain can bring us, even to death on a cross, God’s will can raise us up even higher.

Palm Sunday is bittersweet. Bitter, because it brings the suffering and death of Jesus. But sweet, because through this God’s will is shown to be greater than sin and death, and because Jesus bore His suffering perfectly, with faith in the Lord, God bestowed upon him the “name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Palm Sunday shows us that Christ can sympathize with our pain, because He has suffered. It shows us that God does NOT abandon us, even in our darkest hour. It shows us that God will carry us through, and raise us even from the dead. At the end of the race there is the glory of God, and we should not lose heart nor hope. Palm Sunday is here, but Easter is coming.

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