Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
We are entering Holy Week. On the one hand, Holy Week commemorates the story of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. However, if we look deeper, it is also our story. Holy week and the story of Jesus, as we heard it in the reading of the passion, recounts the stark realities of the human condition. Within the story we find intense suffering, intrigue, malice, prejudice, hatred, betrayal, bribery, corruption, violence, and murder. But Intertwined in this story is also the life of a man who transformed that tragic story into a story of love, forgiveness, peace and human redemption. He did so by becoming the “suffering servant” of God – a concept introduced to us both in the first and second readings.
Christians identify Jesus as the “suffering servant” par excellence. The life of the suffering servant has much to teach us. I would like to draw three practical implications from today’s scripture.
Suffering Servant - Transforming Evil into Good
In some way, we all experience the consequences of the sinful human condition. We too experience the pain of sin, betrayal, illness, aging, and death. But we learn from the passion story that, like Jesus, we too have the capacity within us to take all the evil we experience and transform it. Like Christ, we have the choice to take in the evil in the world and transform it into good. Over that power, evil has no control. We do not have to return evil with evil. Instead, we can turn hate into love, resentment into forgiveness, betrayal into loyalty, death into life.
Holy Week and the story of Jesus invites us not only to contemplate the passion of Christ, but to imitate Him by taking all the pain we encounter and making it an opportunity for salvation. Holy Week is an invitation to take up our cross and follow in the footsteps of the ‘Suffering Servant.’ Our Salvation depends on it.
Finding our Place in the Story
Holy Week takes us to the climax of the story of Jesus. But it also the climax of the human story. The story of Jesus IS the story of the human redemption. Because of this, the story of every person must now be told in the light of the story of Jesus. There were many people who were part of the story of Jesus. On the one side there were those who choose evil – the religious leaders, the Roman rulers, Judas, even some in the crowd. There were also those who chose good in the face of evil - Joseph of Arimathea, Mary the mother of Jesus, the woman at the cross, Simon of Cyrene, many in the crowds. But there were also those who stood in the middle, who did nothing about anything. Which one of the above three describes us? Perhaps we are all three at different times in our lives.
At the end of our life, our story will only have meaning depending on how we fit our story into the story of Jesus. What does that story look like at the moment? Hopefully, we find ourselves taking take a stand with and by Christ. Our salvation depends on it.
Two Stories become One
Holy Week is unlike any other week. On the one hand it reveals the sinful human condition, but it also reveals our redemption. My hope is that each one of us will fully enter the depths of these events. I am inviting you to not treat this week as just another week. Rather, reflecting on the readings for each day of the Holy Week and spending time in prayer, participating in the Holy Week liturgies, let us embrace the mystery of God’s work of salvation. Please participate in the celebration of the Last Supper on Thursday; personalize the redeeming death of Jesus, the suffering servant, on Good Friday and keep Holy Saturday as a day of mourning yet hopeful expectation. To do so is the let our lives get intertwined with the life, the passion, the suffering of Jesus, the suffering servant. Our salvation depends on it.
Let our participation in this Eucharist be the beginning of our solemn participation in the life of Jesus. When in the Eucharist Jesus invites us to eat his body and drink his blood, he is inviting us into his story. And when we say, “Amen” we are inviting him into ours. Let Christ’s life and ours become one, especially during Holy Week. Amen.
- Fr. Satish Joseph