Having The Same Mind As Christ

 

Palm Sunday begins Holy Week- the most solemn week of the year for Christians. We spend these days remembering all that Jesus did to save us- the indignities He suffered, the blood He shed, the life He gave. He willingly suffered such a cruel death out of love for you and for me. He took upon Himself the punishment we deserved for our selfishness, pride and hatred. The forgiveness of our sins and the hope of everlasting life are ours because of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for us.

His death on the cross was an act of pure love. He had the power to put an end to it all, to allow the cup to pass Him by. He could have called down legions of angels to save Him from the Roman soldiers. As the Son of God, He could have come down from the cross. Instead, He chose to lay down His life and so take upon Himself the sins of all the world. 

 Because of His great love, He accepted a humiliating death even though He knew that so many would still refuse to recognize Him as Lord. He knew that many would still reject Him or be indifferent to His sacrifice. He knew that for many people His death would make no difference in the way they lived. Yet He pressed on obedient to the will of His Father. As the prophet Isaiah writes, “[He] set His face like flint knowing He would not be put to shame”.

This is the mystery we remember and celebrate on Palm Sunday as we read the account of His passion and death with palm branches in our hands.

 But we would miss the purpose of today’s solemnity entirely if all we did was remember it. It would be nothing more than a retelling or a re-enactment of an historic event of the past. Rather what we must do is imitate our Lord in His humility, patience and, most especially, His love. As Saint Paul tells us in the second reading, we must have within us the same attitude that Christ had.

 As He suffered for us, so we must accept suffering for Him and for others. Just as He loved those who hated Him, we must love our enemies as well as our friends. Just as He forgave those who tortured and killed Him, so we must forgive those who offend us. And just as He has shown mercy to us poor sinners, so we must reach out to the poor who are in need of our generosity.

 When we do so, the love of Christ becomes real for us and the healing power of the cross breaks into our world which can so often be dark and cold. Considering all that Jesus has done to save us, how could we ever close our hand to or turn our backs on our neighbors in their need?

Let Him Enter, The King Of Glory

 

 Every year of his life, Jesus made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the commemoration of His people’s freedom from slavery in Egypt. For most of those years, He went unnoticed. He blended in with the crowds who prayed in the temple and offered sacrifice according to the Jewish law.

 However, today things are different. Jesus enters triumphantly into the Holy City. Rather than walking through the gates of the city, He rides a donkey. Rather than join the bustling crowd filing its way through the cobblestone streets, He enters the city as part of a festive parade with crowds chanting His name, laying their cloaks on the street before Him and waving palm branches in celebration.

 The crowds gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover that year had a sense that something was about to change. They had the feeling that somehow they were part of an historic occurrence, a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness history in the making. The atmosphere was charged with excitement and anticipation. And Jesus was at the center of it all.

Those crowds could not have known that in only a few short days the man they hailed as Messiah would be executed as a criminal. They could not have known that they would soon turn on Him and demand His crucifixion. Much less could the political and religious leaders who were already planning His death know that, within a week’s time, He would rise from the dead and change the course of history forever. They were all part of an historic event, but they could not yet begin to grasp its meaning for themselves and for the world.

 Jesus enters the Holy City of Jerusalem as its King and Messiah. But unlike an earthly king, He does not conquer through military power. He does not rally His disciples to attack His opponents or devise a plan to coerce the people to hand power over to Him. Rather He comes as the Suffering Servant described in today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah. He defeats evil by doing good. He returns a blessing for a curse and forgiveness for injury. He refuses to attack those who arrest Him or to defend Himself against those who torture Him. And by so doing, He changes everything.

On A Colt, The Foal Of An Ass

 

On this Palm Sunday, we commemorate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. 

He comes as a king to take the throne of David. But he is no earthly king. He does not enter on a muscular steed, but on a lowly donkey. It is not a well equipped army that escorts him through the gates of the royal city but a band of peasants. And he does not enter the city to take it by force but to surrender himself to a sentence of death. 

Jesus is not at all what we would expect from someone who claims to be the Son of God and Savior of the World.

 If we are to be his followers then we cannot live only for our own comfort and well-being but for his glory. 

But if we do take up our cross and follow him, we will know a joy and a peace which no one can ever take from us. And we will have treasure in heaven more glorious than we could ever hope for or imagine.

Praise And Ridicule

There are few contrasts as great as the ones we experience in today’s readings.

We opened the Mass proclaiming the glorious entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The crowd shouts “Hosanna!” as he rides triumphantly into the city. The people throw down their cloaks before Him and wave palm branches. The mood is festive and jubilant as Christ receives the praise He is due as the Eternal Son of God and Messiah. Through it all, Jesus remains silent, accepting the adulation of the crowd without getting carried away by their excitement.

The whole scene changed dramatically, however, when we proclaimed the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark. We see Jesus in anguish as He asks His Father to take the cup of suffering away from Him. We hear the dismay in His voice when Peter, James and John fail to stay awake even one hour with Him. Then, He remains silent as he faces arrest, an unjust trial and crucifixion. The words of the prophet Isaiah which we heard in today’s first reading come to mind: “I have set my face like flint knowing I will not be put to shame.”

Jesus’ attitude remains the same whether He is being praised or ridiculed, whether people are waving palm branches at Him or beating Him with whips. At all times, He displays a peaceful, silent demeanor. Because His desire is to please God rather than men, it does not matter to Him whether others are following Him or turning away from Him. He is focused resolutely on nothing else except His Heavenly Father’s will. And if it is His Father’s will that He should “give His life as a ransom for the many” through death on a cross, He will do it trusting fully in God’s love.

If we are going  to be followers of Jesus, then we must adopt the same attitude. Our focus must always be on God’s will and not on what others expect of us. To be truly Christian, our desire to please God must be greater than our fear of ridicule from men. Like Jesus, we must be equally comfortable being made fun of as being praised. If we are worried about how others will judge us, we will never pick up our cross and follow Jesus as Simon the Cyrene does and as we are invited to do. We will always be looking over our shoulder taking our cue from what others are doing rather than from what God wills for us. People and their expectations are always changing but God remains the same yesterday, today and forever.

And so we begin this Holy Week remembering how Christ triumphantly entered the city of Jerusalem to suffer and die for us so that we may be saved. Can we accept what little suffering comes our way out of love for Him? Since He has done so much for us, should we not be more concerned about what His will for us is than what others - who have done little if nothing by comparison - expect of us?

Vanquishing Death

Over the centuries, the city of Jerusalem had seen many kings and conquerors enter its gates. They came in full armor, standing on chariots with hundreds of soldiers in their entourage. However, Jerusalem had never seen anyone like Jesus before. Like the others, He came to lay claim to the city as its King and Savior. However, unlike them, He rode a young horse, wearing the tunic of a poor Jewish carpenter with fishermen, beggars, prostitutes and tax collectors in His entourage.

Nonetheless, the people came from all over the city waving palm branches and laying their cloaks in the street to welcome Him as their King and Savior. They recognized that He wielded a different kind of power than those other kings who brought swords and soldiers with them. Those kings could only assert their authority over other men and kingdoms. Jesus has a greater authority. He commands demons and they come shrieking out of those they have possessed. He has authority over sickness. He multiplies loaves and fishes, walks on water and even raises the dead.

Jesus comes to the city to fight a battle against our bitterest enemy - Death. Every king who entered into Jerusalem, no matter how powerful, eventual had to succumb to death. Jesus came not only to conquer a city but to conquer a kingdom - the kingdom of Death. During this week, He will take on Himself all the cruelties that man can deliver - insults, tortures and, finally, crucifixion. He will hand His spirit over to His Father, be laid in a tomb and go down to the nether world. Like every human being, He will experience Death. However, He will rise on the third day as He promised. He survives even Death. It has no more power over Him.

Many kings have come since Jesus, one more powerful than the next. They have commanded continents, found more sophisticated ways of subjugating their enemies and developed terrifying weapons. As mighty as they have all seemed, none has been able to conquer Death. Not even in our own day, with all the advances we have made in science and technology, has any sane person claimed to have found a “cure” for Death.  Only Jesus can make that claim. Do we not have to admit, then, that He is the most powerful man who has ever lived? And, if He is, then must we not swear our allegiance to Him as our King and Savior?

If the words that the people cry out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!...Hosanna in the highest!”, sound familiar, it is because they are the same words we use at Mass just before the Eucharistic prayer: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts! Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!” With these words we welcome Jesus, our King and Savior, into this temple. We acknowledge that our Risen Lord is present in our midst. We celebrate His victory over sin and death.

In this place, He also makes a promise to us. If we believe in Him, if we make Him the Lord of our life, He will share His victory over Death with us. He says, “Those who eat the bread that I will give will never die but will have eternal life.” When we eat the body He offered upon the cross and drink from the chalice which is the blood of the new covenant, His eternal life passes into us. We will still have to fight our own battle with Death and, like Jesus, our heart will stop beating and we will hand over our spirit to the Father in Heaven. However, like Jesus, we will pass on to a new and everlasting life. We will be raised again with Jesus and Death will no longer be able to threaten us again or separate us from those we love. The victory is ours if we believe and welcome Jesus as the Lord of our hearts.

We begin this Holy Week commemorating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Though He was the most powerful man to ever walk the earth, He humbled Himself to experience Death for our sakes so that we could enter into the everlasting life that He has with God in Heaven. The best way to remember His great love is not by waving palm branches but by having the same humble attitude He did, as Saint Paul urges us in today’s second reading from the Letter to the Philippians. We must live His victory over sin and death by overcoming our own temptations, alleviating the suffering of those around us and struggling against the current culture of death which denies the dignity and right to life of every human being. Then, when Jesus comes again to take possession of the whole world, we can bend the knee with all creation and cry out, “Jesus Christ is Lord!” to the glory of God the Father.

Entering In Triumph - Raised Up In Glory

Every year of his life, Jesus made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the commemoration of His people’s freedom from slavery in Egypt. For most of those years, He went unnoticed. He blended in with the crowds who prayed in the temple and offered sacrifice according to the Jewish law.

However, today things are different. Jesus enters triumphantly into the Holy City. Rather than walking through the gates of the city, He rides a donkey. Rather than join the bustling crowd filing its way through the cobblestone streets, He enters the city as part of a festive parade with crowds chanting His name, laying their cloaks on the street before Him and waving palm branches in celebration.

The crowds gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover that year had a sense that something was about to change. They had the feeling that somehow they were part of an historic occurrence, a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness history in the making. The atmosphere was charged with excitement and anticipation. And Jesus was at the center of it all.

Those crowds could not have known that in only a few short days the man they hailed as Messiah would be executed as a criminal. They could not have known that they would soon turn on Him and demand His crucifixion. Much less could the political and religious leaders who were already planning His death know that, within a week’s time, He would rise from the dead and change the course of history forever. They were all part of an historic event, but they could not yet begin to grasp its meaning for themselves and for the world.

Jesus enters the Holy City of Jerusalem as its King and Messiah. But unlike an earthly king, He does not conquer through military power. He does not rally His disciples to attack His opponents or devise a plan to coerce the people to hand power over to Him. Rather He comes as the Suffering Servant described in today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah. He defeats evil by doing good. He returns a blessing for a curse and forgiveness for injury. He refuses to attack those who arrest Him or to defend Himself against those who torture Him. And by so doing, He changes everything.

We stand here today as we have for just about every year of our lives to commemorate the suffering and death that Jesus underwent to save us from the slavery of sin and death. We remember as Saint Paul tells us in today’s second reading, how He came down to earth that we may be lifted up to Heaven and how He emptied Himself that we may be filled. Jesus suffered it all for you and for me. Why? Simply because He loves us and He wants us to know His Heavenly Father’s love for us. We must also realize that it was because of our sin that He died on the cross. If we were to leave this place and continue living sinful lives, we would be no better than the crowds who so shortly turned on Jesus after welcoming Him with such fanfare.

We stand here today in a society that is increasingly hostile to the message of Jesus. It is a world that fails to value the dignity and sacredness of human life. It is a world that treats fertility as a curse and pregnancy as a disease rather than as a participation in God’s creative power.  It is a world that ingratiates the powerful and enriches the wealthy and that tells the poor that their lack of resources is their own fault. It is a world that ridicules and persecutes those who follow Jesus.

It is to this world torn by selfishness, hatred and ignorance that we are called to bring Jesus’ message. Like Jesus, we do not change the world through military power or political influence. We do it with the witness of our lives, by acting as He did. We do it through marriages that are truly loving. We do it by sacrificing our pleasures to feed the poor and help those in need. Very often, it means putting up with insults and ridicule because we do not share the values of our classmates or coworkers. Only by forgiving those who injure us and blessing those who curse us as Jesus did can we convince others about the sacredness of every human life and the love of God.

It is not easy. We cannot do it without God’s help. So I would encourage all of you to make the effort this week to attend all the Holy Week services for Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. As we recall all that Jesus did to save us we will be strengthened to not only change the way we live but to proclaim to others that we are truly free only through the love of God. Then Jesus the King and Messiah will be welcome in our world once again.

Abandoned By God

It is one of the most emotional of all verses in the gospels.

“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”

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

Jesus is alone, suspended between heaven and earth on the cross. He has been abandoned by His disciples. He is mocked by all those who see Him, even by the thieves crucified alongside Him. In the height of agony, He feels abandoned even by His Heavenly Father. His feeling of rejection strikes right down to His identity as Son of God.

At that moment, He takes on the suffering of all those who are abandoned. He becomes one with those who are abandoned by society because they are unemployed. He becomes one with women and men who are abandoned by their spouses. Stripped naked, He shares the lot of those who are poor, hungry and homeless.  He joins His cry with children who are abandoned by their parents and are even killed in the womb. Every victim of violence, all those whom our society considers useless, all those who feel left out find in Jesus a brother, one who shares their suffering and one who takes their burden upon Himself.

We must be careful, however, when we hear Jesus scream out these words, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” Though it is a cry of unutterable anguish and heart wrenching grief, it is not an expression of despair. Jesus feels abandoned, but He never fails to hope in His Heavenly Father’s goodness even as He suffers shocking cruelty and tortures.

Jesus’ cry from the cross is a quotation from Psalm 22 which served as our Responsorial Psalm today. It is the prayer of a man who is undergoing intense persecution. However, it is also a  prophecy of Jesus’ sufferings detailing how He would be ridiculed, how His hands and feet would be pierced and how the soldiers would cast lots for His clothing.

By reciting a line from this psalm, Jesus shows not only that He feels abandoned and alone but that He understands His sufferings in light of this prophecy. He is signalling to those who are witnessing His crucifixion - and to us who are remembering it here today - that He expects God to vindicate Him. On the cross, Jesus appears to be broken, humiliated and defeated. However, in the end, God will grant Him victory.

Notice how the psalm ends: “You, O Lord, are not far from me...I will proclaim your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.” These are not the words of a despairing man. Rather, they express abiding faith and steadfast confidence rooted in the unfailing love of our Heavenly Father. This confidence is echoed in our first reading, another prophecy of Jesus’ passion from the prophet Isaiah: “The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”

All of us gathered here today have been given a share in Christ’s cross. It could be an illness that we are facing. We might be living with the pain of a broken relationship or failed marriage. Some here may be grieving the loss of a parent, spouse or other loved one. Many here today may be burdened with loneliness or anxiety over life’s many challenges. Whatever burden we may be carrying, it is when we are feeling most alone and abandoned that Jesus is closest to us.

Remember, Jesus did not have to suffer and die. He could have prevented the soldiers from carrying Him off and He could have come down from the cross. As the saying goes, it was not nails which kept Jesus on the cross but love. It was out of love for us - especially for those of us who are suffering - that He accepted the Father’s will and gave His life in the most humiliating way imaginable. It was so that we would know what lengths God was willing to go for love of us, even though it was because of our sins that He would die.

Furthermore, he died on the cross to teach us that if we wanted to find Him, it would be among the poor and the suffering. If we are living a comfortable life, enjoying the world’s pleasures, and God seems distant to us, then it is time for us to go out to where He has chosen to make His home. It is time for us to go out, to live and to work among the poor, the homeless, the sick and the abandoned. When we encounter them and try to alleviate their suffering, then God will become real for us - not just a story in a book, not just a statue, not just an old man in the sky, but a living, breathing person who has chosen to disguise Himself in the elderly, the immigrant and the mentally ill.

Having reflected on God’s word, we now turn to this altar. We bring forth gifts of bread and wine which symbolize our joys and struggles, triumphs and defeats. Our Heavenly Father accepts them out of love for us and will transform them in the Body and Blood of His Son. The same body which was broken on the cross and the same blood which was spilled to forgive our sins will be made present here for us today. It is God’s undying pledge that He will vindicate those who have dared to hope in Him.  It is God’s undying pledge that He has not abandoned us but that He is with us always.