PALM SUNDAY, YR C
Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22;
Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14: -23:56
THE CHEERS AND THE PAIN
A remarkable thing about today’s celebration is that, we commemorate the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem amid the cheers of the people. these people threw their clocks on the road for him. But we also recognise a sharp twist in the plot, when all of them abandoned Jesus to face the wicked leaders alone. How many times have we not been only concerned about the aesthetics of the Christian faith but fade into silence when we are challenged to take a moral stand as Christians.?
The Passion narrative speaks of the three basic needs we all have;
The need for acceptance
The need for appreciation
The need to Belong.
We all want to be accepted as we are. The hardest and most difficult attitudes to endure is when we are rejected and not accepted. No matter who we are, what we are we all have that desire to be accepted.
We want to be appreciated for our qualities and our works. Sometimes when we put in so much but do not receive recognition it can be very discouraging heart breaking. Above all when this lack of appreciation comes from those, we are putting in the effort for. who wants to ever be an outsider in any way? We all seek to be identified as belonging to a group, family or band of friends. we all want to belong. We all have a desire to connect with others and to feel a sense of community and shared identity.
Our lives are often spent chasing after these things, but Jesus had none of them on his path to the cross. He was abandoned by his friends, branded a criminal by the authorities and rejected by the very people who once praised him.
To make matters worse, many of us today abandon him when we avoid being witnesses of the gospel in the world.
We reject him when we do things according to our own desires and cravings.
By worldly standards, he would be judged as a failure. He had the opportunity to back down and avoid the suffering that awaited him in Jerusalem. We saw this in the first Sunday of Lent, in the account of his temptations. But from the moment of his incarnation, this was THE TIME towards which he was heading. The climax of the love story in the Bible. The Lord loves us. He loves us too much. He had so much love that he embraced the cross on our behalf even though he knew how painful and crushing it would be: the holiest of all men, the most Inocent of all, embraces the sins of the whole world with no exception.
The gospel of the Mass today is the expression of Jesus’ love towards us. So much love does Jesus have for us.
We pray for strength to accept this love, and pray that we too may return this love by living lives true to our Christian faith.
God bless you.
BY Rev. Fr. Delight Carbonu
