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PALM SUNDAY YEAR C ~ APRIL 13, 2025

PALM SUNDAY YEAR C ~ APRIL 13, 2025

WHAT DO WE OFFER HIM?

Today we begin our Holy Week: a solemn celebration of our Lord’s Passion, death, and Resurrection. As Holy Father Pope Francis says “The crowd of disciples accompanies him in festive mood, their garments are stretched out before him, there is talk of the miracles he has accomplished, and loud praises are heard: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Lk 19:38). Crowds, celebrating, praise, blessing, peace: joy fills the air. Jesus has awakened great hopes, especially in the hearts of the simple, the humble, the poor, the forgotten, those who do not matter in the eyes of the world. He understands human sufferings, he has shown the face of God’s mercy, and he has bent down to heal body and soul. This is Jesus. This is his heart which looks to all of us, to our sicknesses, to our sins. The love of Jesus is great. And thus, he enters Jerusalem, with this love, and looks at us. It is a beautiful scene, full of light – the light of the love of Jesus, the love of his heart – of joy, of celebration. At the beginning of Mass, we too repeated it. We waved our palms, our olive branches. We too welcomed Jesus; we too expressed our joy at accompanying him, at knowing him to be close, present in us and among us as a friend, a brother, and as a King: that is, a shining beacon for our lives. Jesus is God, but he lowered himself to walk with us. He is our friend, our brother. He illumines our path here. And in this way, we have welcomed him today”.

All four gospels mention the triumph entry of the Lord to Jerusalem. Is it the only time Jesus has come to Jerusalem? If not, then why does this entry have importance for the Evangelists?  The Gospel according to St. Luke mentions that Jesus was in Jerusalem when He was 12 in accordance with the custom of his parents who used to come every year to participate in the solemn celebration of Passover. If so, then what is the importance and significance of Jesus’s entry to Jerusalem? Why does Jesus enter Jerusalem? Or better: how does Jesus enter Jerusalem? The crowds acclaim him as King. And he does not deny it, he does not tell them to be silent (Lk 19:39-40). But what kind of a King is Jesus? Let us look at him: he is riding on a donkey, he is not accompanied by a court, he is not surrounded by an army as a symbol of power. He is received by humble people, simple folk who have the sense to see something more in Jesus; they have that sense of the faith which says: here is the Saviour. Jesus does not enter the Holy City to receive the honours reserved to earthly kings, to the powerful, to rulers; he enters to be scourged, insulted and abused, as Isaiah foretold in the First Reading (cf. Is 50:6). He enters to receive a crown of thorns, a staff, a purple robe: his kingship becomes an object of derision. He enters to climb Calvary, carrying his burden of wood.  Jesus enters Jerusalem to die on the Cross. And it is precisely here that his kingship shines forth in godly fashion: his royal throne is the wood of the Cross! Once Pope Benedict XVI said to the Cardinals: you are princes, but of a king crucified. That is the throne of Jesus. Jesus takes it upon himself… Why the Cross? Because Jesus takes the evil upon himself, the filth, the sin of the world, including the sin of all of us, and he cleanses it, he cleanses it with his blood, with the mercy and the love of God. Let us look around: how many wounds are inflicted upon humanity by evil! Wars, violence, economic conflicts that hit the weakest, greed for money that you can’t take with you. When we were small, our grandmother used to say: a shroud has no pocket. Love of power, corruption, divisions, crimes against human life and against creation! And – as each one of us knows and is aware – our personal sins: our failures in love and respect towards God, towards our neighbour and towards the whole of creation. Jesus on the Cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it, he defeats it with his resurrection. This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the Cross. Christ’s Cross embraced with love never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little of what he did on the day of his death.

Let me share a story by an unknown author which should help us to reflect on our own journey which must take with the Lord. This journey will bring us to meditate and reflect on some very important aspects of Jesus’ triumphant entry to Jerusalem. The story follows:

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves, he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay vessels. It was like someone had rolled balls of clay and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn’t look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay vessels. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

Sometimes we fail to see to what God is giving us and what we can offer him as while we walk with him in his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. I feel his journey should be our journey and his victory must be the source of our joy. There are many aspects related to his journey towards Jerusalem.

First of all, Jesus’s vision and mission is clear because he knew why he came to the world as we read in the Letter to Hebrews “Since the law was only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach.  Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin?  But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sin year after year.  For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.  Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first to establish the second.  And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:1-10). We too must have clear vision of our calling and mission. Every Holy Mass we attend is invitation to continue our mission and journey as we hear “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life”.

Secondly Jesus is ready for the great act of God’s love to share with all of us “God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son, so that anyone who believes in him, may have life and life in abundance”. Jesus has gone through persecutions and discriminations by the Pharisees and high authorities, and he knows very well about his fate, but he has forgotten everything because of love for the lost and scattered sheep “he had compassion for them”. Are we ready to bear witness of his sacrifice in the secular world where everything is going against the faith?

Thirdly, he is riding on the donkey (shows his humility) but not on a horse or chariot because he was God’s obedient suffering servant who came to do his will. Humility is a virtue and without it we can not walk with Jesus. Two years ago, I got the blessing and grace of the Lord to walk on the streets of Jerusalem and when I was walking, I could feel and imagine how Lord must have felt the pain of the journey he was taking and what is coming to him next must have broken his heart and soul but “he was obedient to death even death on a Cross. Lenten journey is a journey of humility for us because by receiving the ashes on our foreheads was remind that we must “repent and believe in the Gospel”. Humility leads us every day to walk with the Lord in his journey of suffering and death which he took for our salvation.

Fourthly there will be two types of people walking with Jesus first who will be spreading their clothes on the ground and shouting Hosanna, Hosanna. These people have believed in Jesus, and they love to follow him. However, there is another group people who will be shouting crucify him, crucify him and will mock, taunt and slap him. What group we belong to is a very important question for us to ask?

Fifthly, the entry of Jesus to Jerusalem has also exposed the real faces of his own disciples who used to claim that even if they must die with him or for him, they will, but when the time came, what did they do? One of them sold him for 30 pieces of silver, other denied him completely by saying he doesn’t know him at all and some of them ran away, when he was arrested by the Roman Authorities. Don’t we do the same? We do because we have no guts to stand for him. We like to serve both; him and the world. We betray him when we refuse to stand for our faith because we don’t want to offend others. We have failed to understand what is right and what is wrong. Since we don’t want to be excluded from our relationships, we continue to join the society and do what others are doing.   Unfortunately, we have fallen into the same trap.  Whatsoever, the conclusion of this journey is so powerful, despite the unfaithfulness of the people, he showed his love for us by dying on the Cross. He has reminded us “There is no greater love than to lay your own life for the sake of one’s friend”. Although he suffers everyday for us but still, he continues to carry us in our suffering.

This journey of Jesus to Jerusalem reveals various people with different mentalities, as Pope Francis explains: “We have just heard many, many names. The group of leaders, some priests, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, who had decided to kill Jesus. They were waiting for the chance to arrest him. Am I like one of them?

We have also heard another name: Judas. Thirty pieces of silver. Am I like Judas? We have heard other names too: the disciples who understand nothing, who fell asleep while the Lord was suffering. Has my life fallen asleep? Or am I like the disciples, who did not realize what it was to betray Jesus? Or like that other disciple, who wanted to settle everything with a sword? Am I like them? Am I like Judas, who feigns loved and then kisses the Master to hand him over, to betray him? Am I a traitor? Am I like those people in power who hastily summon a tribunal and seek false witnesses: am I like them? And when I do these things, if I do them, do I think that in this way I am saving the people?

Am I like Pilate? When I see that the situation is difficult, do I wash my hands and dodge my responsibility, allowing people to be condemned – or condemning them myself?

Am I like that crowd which was not sure whether they were at a religious meeting, a trial or a circus, and then chose Barabbas? For them it was all the same: it was more entertaining to humiliate Jesus.

Am I like the soldiers who strike the Lord, spit on him, insult him, who find entertainment in humiliating him?

Am I like the Cyrenian, who was returning from work, weary, yet was good enough to help the Lord carry his cross?

Am I like those who walked by the cross and mocked Jesus: “He was so courageous! Let him come down from the cross and then we will believe in him!”. Mocking Jesus….

Am I like those fearless women, and like the mother of Jesus, who were there, and who suffered in silence?

Am I like Joseph, the hidden disciple, who lovingly carries the body of Jesus to give it burial?

Am I like the two Marys, who remained at the Tomb, weeping and praying?

Am I like those leaders who went the next day to Pilate and said, “Look, this man said that he was going to rise again. We cannot let another fraud take place!”, and who block life, who block the tomb, in order to maintain doctrine, lest life come forth?

Where is my heart? Which of these persons am I like? May this question remain with us throughout the entire week. 

St. Augustine says “God could give no greater gift to men than to make his Word, through whom he created all things, their head and to join them to him as his members, so that the Word might be both Son of God and son of man, one God with the Father, and one man with all men.  Let us then recognize both our voice in his, and his voice in ours. When something is said, especially in prophecy, about the Lord Jesus Christ that seems to belong to a condition of lowliness unworthy of God, we must not hesitate to ascribe this condition to one who did not hesitate to unite himself with us. Every creature is his servant, for it was through him that every creature came to be. We must realize that the one whom we were contemplating a short time before in his nature as God took to himself the nature of a servant; he was made in the likeness of men and found to be a man like others; he humbled himself by being obedient even to accepting death; as he hung on the cross he made the psalmist’s words his own: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We pray to him as God, he prays for us as a servant. In the first case he is the Creator, in the second a creature. Himself unchanged, he took to himself our created nature in order to change it, and made us one man with himself, head and body. We pray then to him, through him, in him, and we speak along with him and he along with us”.

If we want to walk with the Lord to offer our hearts and minds to him then must act like people who trust in him. Let me end my reflection with this story.

A wise man was walking from one town to another with a few of his followers and they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there to rest for a while and the wise man said to one of his followers . . . I am very thirsty, could you please go and get me some water from that lake.

As requested, the follower walked to the lake and when he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water, and right at that moment, several bullock carts started crossing the lake. As a result of this, the water became very muddy and murky. The follower thought, how can I give this muddy water to my leader to drink? So, he went back and told the wise man that the water in the lake was very muddy and not fit to drink. 

After they had rested for about half an hour, the wise man again asked the same follower to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink. The follower obediently went to the edge of the lake and this time he found that all the mud had settled to the bottom and the water above it was crystal clear and looked fit to drink. He filled his water bottle and took it to the wise man.

The wise man took the water bottle and drank, and then he looked up at the follower and said . . .  see what you did to make the water clean and fit to drink, you let it be for a while and the mud settled down on its own so that could then get some clear drinking water for me.

What do we offer him while walking with him?

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