Passion (Palm) Sunday

 

Year. A

 

Mt 21.1-11; Is 50.4-7; Phil 2.6-11, Mt 26.14-27;66

 

Congratulations dear Christians, Congrats, you are well appreciated, well accepted, you are sociable, you celebrate life, you run good institutions, schools, colleges, at learning languages, but I am just warning you, you are not people of deep God-experience. One Hindu addressing Christians told this on a Centenary Celebration day. “I say I love you, but I am not convinced fully that you carry your cross.” He ended his reflection.

 

Look at the life of Jesus, fully equipped with humility and surrender to accept God’s will.

 

The son of man must suffer

 

The son of man came to give life, life in abundance…

 

The son of man came to lay down his life

 

There is no greater love than laying down ones life for friends.

 

This event of Palm Sunday constitutes the one earthly triumph of Jesus' life and ministry. The crowd was following him because of the great miracle he had wrought in raising Lazarus from the dead. The sisters from Bethany and Lazarus were apparently well known. As the crowd grew in numbers, Jesus sensed that the Father was asking him to acquiesce to this acclamation. He sent ahead for a beast of burden. For the first time, as far as we know, he mounted. He was thus slightly above the crowd so that all could see him. The people started pulling down branches from the trees and throwing them in front of him. Their enthusiasm became contagious. The whole city was plunged into excitement. The crowd was waving palms, singing and proclaiming him to be the son of David, the king of Israel of times past and the father of the Messiah. The words clearly implied a divine visitation. That is why the Pharisees demanded, "Stop your disciples from crying out. They are making you equal to God." He replied, "If they are quiet, the stones will cry out." All creation was bearing witness to the coming to final term of the life of him who is the source of all that is.

 

The thunderous shouts and applause of the immense crowd form the background for Jesus' amazing entry into Jerusalem. When he came to the brow of the Mount of Olives, the procession stopped and Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He wept because the city could not perceive the great opportunity that it was about to lose. He was fully aware that the authorities were plotting his death and that the adulation he was receiving would soon turn to condemnation. The superficial enthusiasm of the crowd had a hollow ring.

 

Nothing could be worse public relations than to have the celebrity of the moment burst into tears, especially when you are trying to turn him into a king or a god. Jesus wept because of, the deep tragedy that only he had eyes to perceive. "Jerusalem" he sobbed, "if only you had known the time of your visitation. Now it is too late." Thus, the city that he loved so much was fated to undergo total destruction. It did not know the time of its divine visitation.

 

Jesus is the paradigm of humanity, the universal human being, God's idea of human nature with its enormous potentialities. According to the great hymn of Paul to God's humility, the divine Person of the Word, source of everything that exists, did not cling to his divine dignity or prerogatives, but threw them all away. In God there seems to be the need not to be God. In creating, God, in a sense, dies, because he is no longer alone; he is completely involved in