First Reading – Isaiah 50:4-7;
Second Reading – Philippians 2:6-11;
Gospel – Matthew 26:14-27:66
The Church celebrates this Sixth Sunday in Lent as both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. It is on Palm Sunday that we enter Holy Week, welcoming Jesus into our lives and asking Him to allow us a share in His suffering, death, and Resurrection. This is the time of the year when The Church stops us so that we can remember and relive the events which have brought about our redemption and salvation. The Holy Week liturgies present us with the actual events of the suffering, dying, and rising of Jesus. These liturgies enable us to experience in our lives, here and now, what Jesus went through then. Further, in all that we are commemorating and reliving during this week of Jesus’ Passion and death, we are also reviewing the quality of our ongoing dying to ourselves and our sinfulness and begging that by our penitence and His Mercy, we may rise in Him healed, reconciled and redeemed. Like Jesus, we must freely lay down our lives for Him, by actively participating in the Holy Week liturgies. In doing so, we are allowing Jesus to forgive us our sins, heal the wounds in us caused by our sins and the sins of others, and transform us more completely into the image and likeness of God. In these ways, we will be able to live more fully the Divine life we received at Baptism. Attentive participation in the Holy Week liturgies will also deepen our relationship with God, increase our Faith, and strengthen our lives as disciples of Jesus. But let us remember that Holy Week can become “holy” for us only if we actively and consciously take part in the liturgies of this week. During this week of the Passion — passionate suffering, passionate grace, passionate love, and passionate forgiving – each of us is called to remember the Christ of Calvary and then to embrace and lighten the burden of the Christ whose passion continues to be experienced in the hungry, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the aged, the lonely, and the outcast. Today’s liturgy combines two moments seen in contrast: one of glory, — the welcome of Jesus into Jerusalem — the other of suffering: the drama of his two unjust trials ending in his condemnation, crucifixion, and death. Let us rejoice and sing as Jesus comes into our life today. Let us also weep and mourn as his death confronts us with our sin. The African-American song asks the question, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they nailed Him to a tree?” The answer is yes, a definite yes. Yes, we were there in the crowd on both days, shouting, “Hosanna!” and later “Crucify Him!”
Today’s first reading, the third of Isaiah’s four Servant Songs, like the other three, foreshadows Jesus’ own life and mission. The Refrain for today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 22),”My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?” plunges us into the heart of Christ’s Passion.
The Second Reading, taken from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, is an ancient Christian hymn representing a very early Christian understanding of who Jesus is, and of how his mission saves us from sin and death.
The first part of today’s Gospel describes the royal reception Jesus received from his admirers, who paraded with him for a distance of the two miles between the Mount of Olives and the city of Jerusalem. In the second part of today’s Gospel, we listen to / participate in a reading of the Passion of Christ according to Matthew. We are challenged to examine our own lives in the light of some of the characters in the story — like Peter who denied Jesus, Judas who betrayed Jesus, Pilate who acted against his conscience, Herod who ridiculed Jesus, and the leaders of the people who preserved their position by getting rid of Jesus. God humbled himself for us! All we can do in response is to bow our heads in awe, and present our loving, contrite hearts to God, begging for mercy. God wants a humbled, contrite heart as the sign of our true repentance. We need to welcome Jesus into our hearts in a special way during the Holy Week. We must be ready to surrender our lives to Jesus during this Holy Week and welcome Him into all areas of our life as our Lord and Saviour, singing “Hosanna.” Today, we receive palm branches at the Divine Liturgy. Let us take them to our homes and put them in a place where we can always see them. Let the palms remind us that Christ is the King of our families, that Christ is the King of our hearts, and that Christ is the only true answer to our quest for happiness and meaning in our lives. And if we do proclaim Christ as our King, let us try to make time for Him in our daily life. Let us remember that He is the One with whom we will be spending eternity. Let us be reminded further that our careers, our education, our finances, our homes, all of the basic material needs in our lives are only temporary. Let us prioritise and place Christ the King as the primary concern in our lives. It is only when we have done this that we will find true peace and happiness in our confused and complex world.
We need face these hard questions on Palm Sunday.
Are we willing to follow Jesus, not just to Church but in our daily life? Are we willing to entrust ourselves to Him even when the future is frightening or confusing, believing that God has a plan?
Are we willing to serve Him until that day when His plan for us on earth is fulfilled?
These are the questions of Palm Sunday. Let us take a fresh look at this familiar event. It could change us forever, because the Passion of Jesus shows us that, though we are sinners who have crucified Jesus, we are able, by His gift, to turn back to Jesus again and ask for his mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is through the Passion of Jesus we receive forgiveness: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed.” (Is 53:5). We need to be ready to become like the humble donkey that carried Jesus. As we “carry Jesus” to the world, we may receive the same welcome that Jesus received on Palm Sunday, but we may also meet the same opposition, crosses, and trials later. Like the donkey, we are called upon to carry Christ to a world that does not know Him.
Let us always remember that a Christian without Christ is a contradiction in terms. Such a one betrays the Christian message. Let us not think that we are “unique donkeys”. Our uniqueness as the perfect disciple of Jesus and as a perfect disciple comes only when we carry Christ on our back. Hence, let us become transparent Christians during this Holy Week, enabling others to see in us Jesus’ universal love, unconditional forgiveness, and sacrificial service.