Readings: Isaiah 50: 4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22: 14 – 23:56
Theme: ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’
By Michael McCabe
Today, Palm Sunday, is the first day of Holy Week, the high point of the Church’s year, climaxing in the Easter Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Two gospels are proclaimed during today’s Eucharist. The first, during the procession with palms, is taken from St Luke and recounts Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on a borrowed colt. He is greeted joyfully by the crowds, who spread their garments on the road before him and acclaim him with the words: ‘Blessings on the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens!’ (Lk 19:38). These are the same crowds who will, a few days later, shout out in unison, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ (Lk 23:21).
During the Liturgy of the Word, the events of Jesus’ passion are proclaimed in full, this year from the Gospel of Luke. We will hear these same events once more on Good Friday, when the passion of Jesus according to the Gospel of John will be proclaimed. Why does the Church give so central a place in its liturgy to the passion and death of Jesus on the Cross? Why do we continue to remember in all their shameful and gory details the humiliation and crucifixion of the one who was Love Incarnate, the one who came on earth only to bring healing, forgiveness and peace? It was surely not because this was the price demanded by the Father for our sins. Only a sadist would demand such a price, and God, far from being a sadist, is Love itself.
No, the Father did not demand that his Son would suffer a violent death. Nor did Jesus deliberately bring about his death. However, he did embrace the Cross freely as he discerned that his mission of love would involve being handed over to his enemies and put to death: ‘Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem’ (Lk 9:51). Jesus’ suffering and death shows us with startling clarity what happens to self-forgetful love in a world ruled by the demons of hatred and violence. Jesus might have avoided the Cross, but only by turning aside from his mission of proclaiming and inaugurating the God’s reign of justice, peace and love. And this he could not and would not do. To reveal the full extent of God’s love for us, he had to endure suffering and death. The events we recall today represent the final phase and climax of Jesus’ life-giving mission of love.
In the story of Jesus’ passion and death, presented in exacting detail in today’s Gospel from Luke, Jesus’ mission moves into a higher key, in which he allows himself to be acted upon rather than to act. For three years, he had acted: reaching out to people, especially the poor and marginalised, proclaiming a message of hope to those longing for liberation, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, and casting out demons. In the first phase of his mission he was the protagonist. Now, in this final phase of his life, he is the one being acted upon. We see him being betrayed, arrested, imprisoned, interrogated by Caiphas, Herod and Pilate, scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, forced to carry a cross, stripped of his garments, and finally nailed and hung on the cross until he expired.
Jesus, suffering and death on the Cross, as the noted Dominican theologian, Herbert McCabe, points out, reveals ‘the weakness of God…, not the weakness of ineffectiveness but the weakness of love, which is our best picture of the power of God. From creation itself right through to redemption the power of God is exercised not in manipulating and interfering with things but in letting them be, because the power of God is the power of love’. It is, however, only through the lens of the resurrection that we come to see the weakness of divine love in our world not as a tragic defeat but as a glorious victory. As our second reading reminds us, ‘God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names, so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld… should acclaim Jesus as Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil. 2: 9 -11)
As we prayerfully recall the memory of Jesus’ passion and death, we remember and express our solidarity with the many victims of violence in our world today. We express our solidarity with all the victims of violence in our world today: the people of Ukraine, Palestine, Myanmar, Yemen, South Sudan, and many other countries. And we pray that, like Jesus, we may be active witnesses to God’s transforming love in our violent world.
Alternative Homily by Tom Casey