Passion (Palm) Sunday
Gospel for Procession (Mk 11: 1-10). Jesus enters Jerusalem as a humble king and he is greeted joyfully by his disciples.
First Reading (Is 50: 4-7). As we listen to this reading, we think of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah suffers as he carries out his mission.
Second Reading (Phil 2: 6-11). By taking our human condition and accepting to die on the cross, God the father raised Jesus up and made him Lord of heaven and earth.
Gospel (Mk 14: 1-15:47). Jesus experiences a crude trial and suffers immensely before being crucified.
Homily
Today and this week that has just begun, the whole world will be celebrating the great mystery of Christ’s love for us. A greater love indeed as he himself will say: “the great love is to lay down his life for his friends”. Christ has taken upon himself our sins and the sins of the whole world.
What did the passion mean for Jesus? And for us today. For three year, Jesus went from village to village to preach the good news, doing good, healing and raising up the dead. Everywhere He went He never hid as He was surrounded by crowds of people who listened to Him and went back fulfilled. Jesus’ three years of active ministry were incredibly full, rewarding but also disappointing as His own did not recognize the divinity in Him.
The turning point in Jesus’ ministry was when he was handed over to his enemies in the garden of Gethsemane by Judas, one of his disciples. From this moment, Jesus began to undergo suffering. It is here that his passion began. He lost control of things. People were now doing things to him rather than by him. Thus he was arrested, led before the authorities of the law of that time such as Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate, questioned and interrogated, scourged and beaten, crowned with thorns, given a cross to carry, stripped of his clothes, mocked and nailed to the cross and He finally died.
When we ourselves are healthy, working, earning good salaries, everybody is and becomes our friend. Life is smooth and everyone smiles at us and we smile back. Such is life. But when suffering, illness or misfortune strikes, friends become few and we suffer alone in our own corner. Friends of yesterday become our enemies, they spread curse upon us. We need to befriend first of all the God of life through Jesus his son whom he sent for our salvation. Friends in Christ, I mean true friends in Christ will never abandon us in our time of suffering. When we feel abandon, we must not lose hope. The moment of suffering is our passion. Jesus never lost hope during his passion. As we move through life, there will be moments of illness, bad-luck, betrayal, loss of friendships and broken relationships, disappointments, death of loved ones, etc. there will be also moments of joys too. All these are part of our life being humans. We do however have a choice in how we respond to all these sorrowful and joyful moments. Jesus survived the passion and he came out of it strong because he responded with an open mind and heart to all the violence. He did not return violence with violence, rather he returned with love and forgiveness. This is the victory of love over destruction.
Let the passion of Christ, the love and the forgiveness he made into it help us to think about it when we find ourselves going through hard times.
