Palm Sunday, year A

 Accepting that He was prepared to suffer unto death to show us how our God loves us, Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah and the Son of God, establishing a new kind of kingship based on accepting the will of the Father above all. He is a king who accepts His limitations as human, embraces all people, especially the poor, crippled and marginalized; and makes welcoming, love and tolerance his code of conduct and ruling.

Jesus gives us an example of patient endurance and faithfulness in suffering. Suffering is something we all encounter. It is not something that anyone likes but sometimes we cope with it better than others who do not accept it as part of life.

He bore our pains and sorrows 

If we really consider ourselves followers of Christ, the text of Isaiah should evoke a response deep within us, seeing how they apply to God’s only beloved Son, and how he chose freely to die for all of us. “He was oppressed and was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Is 53:7).

St Peter tells us that without a sincere love of Christ, we are not true followers of Him. 

We cannot say we fully love him, until we appreciate that he suffered for us. 

To strengthen our faith, St Peter reminds us that “without having seen him you have come to believe in him, and so you are filled already with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described” (1 Pet 1:8).  Having heard the Passion narrative it is not necessary to retrace in great detail the events there described. But we must remember that Christ was no stranger to hardship, privation and suffering, long before that final day of his life.  Being in the form of God, as St Paul says, from the moment he came on earth, Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human as us (Phil 2:6). 

He, the highest God, suffered the hardships of the poor, sometimes without a place to lay his head. He endured hunger and thirst, and after long days pressured by crowds seeking a cure, he often spent whole nights at prayer in the hills. Despite his compassion for all who came to him, he was hated and rejected, particularly by Pharisees and priests, who planned to kill him. This hate and rejection must have been very frustrating and painful for him. It was not easy being rejected by the same people he chose, above all others. 

How terrible was the inner struggle of Jesus before facing his death that those drops of sweat became blood at Gethsemane garden falling to the ground. More so, was the knowledge that one of his own circle of twelve will betray him, that most of the others will leave him, and even the loyal St Peter would swear three time that he had never met him. But most terrible of all as the end drew near was feeling abandoned by God His Father. 

His inner spirit was shrouded in a deep darkness foreseeing the murky darkness of Calvary. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt 27, 46)  That face so cruelly disfigured was the Son of God. The forehead streaming with blood, the hands and feet nailed to the Cross, the body wounded with scourges, the side pierced with a lance; were the forehead, the hands and feet, the holy side of the body of the eternal Word, made visible in Jesus. 

Why such suffering? We can only say with Isaiah, “It was for our transgressions he was smitten, for our sins he was brought low. On him lay the punishment that brings us healing, through his wounds we are made whole” (53: 5).

PRAYER

Dear Father, 

as I read through the narrative of the Passion 

let me find resonance with your Son´s sacrifice and salvation.

May this Passion story 

speak to me as a revelation of your infinite love for us.

May what I find in it help me 

to cope better with suffering, failure and rejection

and find a life-giving message 

for coping with the difficulties of today´s life.

Beautiful God, our Father, 

grant that your Son’s suffering for us 

may not be in vain.

Amen.