Readings:
Isaiah 50:4-7
Psalm 22:8-9, 17-20, 23-24
hilippians 2:6-11
Luke 22:14-23:56 (see also “Passover and Passion”)
Chants
Passion of the Christ
“What is written about Me is coming to fulfillment,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel (see Luke 22:37). Indeed, we have reached the climax of the liturgical year, the highest peak of salvation history, when all that has been anticipated and promised is to be fulfilled. By the close of today’s long Gospel, the work of our redemption will have been accomplished, the new covenant will be written in the blood of His broken body hanging on the cross at the place called the Skull. In His Passion, Jesus is “counted among the wicked,” as Isaiah had foretold (see Isaiah 53:12). He is revealed definitively as the Suffering Servant the prophet announced, the long-awaited Messiah whose words of obedience and faith ring out in today’s First Reading and Psalm. The taunts and torments we hear in these two readings punctuate the Gospel as Jesus is beaten and mocked (see Luke 22:63-65; 23:10-11, 16), as His hands and feet are pierced (see Luke 23:33), as enemies gamble for His clothes ( see Luke 23:34), and as three times they dare Him to prove His divinity by saving Himself from suffering (see Luke 23:35, 37, 39) He remains faithful to God’s will to the end, does not turn back in His trial. He gives Himself freely to His torturers, confident that, as He speaks in today’s First Reading: “The Lord God is My help…I shall not be put to shame.” Destined to sin and death as children of Adam’s disobedience, we have been set free for holiness and life by Christ’s perfect obedience to the Father’s will (see Romans 5:12-14, 17-19; Ephesians 2:2; 5:6). This is why God greatly exalted Him. This is why we have salvation in His Name. Following His example of humble obedience in the trials and crosses of our lives, we know we will never be forsaken, that one day we too will be with Him in Paradise (see Luke 23:42).
Passover and Passion
Since the earliest days, the Church has understood the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross as “the Lord’s Passover” (see The Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 557, 1174, 1337, 1364, 1402). The Eucharist is the memorial of that Passover. The Passion is presented in the New Testament as a Passover sacrifice. In the Passover, Israel was spared by the blood of an unblemished sacrificial lamb painted on their door posts. The lamb dies instead of the first-born, is sacrificed so that the people could live (see Exodus 12:1-23, 27). It is the same with the Lord’s Passover. The Lamb of God dies so that the people of God might live, saved by “the blood of the Lamb” (see Revelation 7:14; 12:11; 5:12). ”For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed,” St. Paul says (see 1 Corinthians 5:7). On the Cross, St. Peter tells us, Jesus was “a spotless unblemished Lamb.” By His “Precious Blood” we are “ransomed” from captivity to sin and death (see 1 Peter 1:18-19). The Israelites were instructed to remember the first Passover by each year eating the Passover lamb’s “roasted flesh with unleavened bread.” And in His Last Supper, eaten during Passover, Jesus instructs His followers to remember His Passover in the Eucharist, where we eat His flesh and drink His blood (see John 6:53-58).
St. Proclus of Constantinople
Sermon 9, for Palm Sunday (PG 65, 772)
This day, my beloved, is a day of the greatest importance. It asks from us great desire, overwhelming eagerness, a brisk going forward to stand awaiting the heavenly King. Paul, messenger of the Good News, has told us: “The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all” (Phil 4,5-6)…
Let us then light the lamps of our faith: like the five wise virgins (Mt 25,1f.) let us fill them with the oil of compassion towards the poor; let us be wide awake to welcome Christ with palms of righteousness in our hands. Let us kiss him, pouring over him Mary’s perfume (Jn 12,3).
Hear the resurrection song: may our voices be raised in a manner worthy of the divine majesty and let us, together with the people, shout aloud the cry that breaks out from the crowd: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel”. How good it is to say: “He who comes”, for he comes unceasingly and never fails us: “The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth” (Ps 145[144],18). “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
This gentle King stands at our door, bringing peace. He who is enthroned on the cherubim in heaven is seated on the foal of an ass here below. Let us make ready the houses of our souls, sweeping away the cobwebs of brotherly misunderstandings, and let the dust of malicious gossip not be found amongst us. Let us spread abroad the waves of our love and pacify all those clashes that arouse our animosity and let then us sow flowers of piety at the door of our lips. Let us then put forth with the people the cry that stirs the crowd: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!”
Pope Benedict XVI
Homily, March 28, 2010
The Gospel of the blessing of the palms that we have heard gathered here in St Peter’s Square, begins with the sentence: “[Jesus] went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem” (Lk 19: 28). At the very beginning of today’s Liturgy, the Church anticipates her response to the Gospel saying: “Let us follow the Lord”.
This clearly expresses the theme of Palm Sunday. It is the sequela. Being Christian means considering the way of Jesus Christ as the right way for being human as that way which leads to our destination, to a completely fulfilled and authentic humanity. … Being Christian is a path or, better, a pilgrimage; it is to travel with Jesus Christ, to journey in the direction he has pointed out and is pointing out to us.
But what direction is this? How do we find it? Our Gospel passage offers two clues in this regard. In the first place it says that it is an ascent. This has first of all a very concrete meaning. Jericho, where the last part of Jesus’ pilgrimage began, is 250 metres below sea-level, whereas Jerusalem the destination is located at 740 to 780 metres above sea level: a climb of almost 1,000 metres. But this external route is above all an image of the internal movement of existence that occurs in the following of Christ: it is an ascent to the true heights of being human.
Man can choose an easy path and avoid every effort. He can also sink to the low and the vulgar. He can flounder in the swamps of falsehood and dishonesty. Jesus walks before us and towards the heights. He leads us to what is great, pure. He leads us to that healthy air of the heights: to life in accordance with the truth; to courage that does not let itself be intimidated by the gossip of prevalent opinions; to patience that bears with and sustains the other.
He guides people to be open towards the suffering, to those who are neglected. He leads us to stand loyally by the other, even when the situation becomes difficult. He leads us to the readiness to give help; to the goodness that does not let itself be disarmed, even by ingratitude. He leads us to love he leads us to God.
Jesus “went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem”. If we interpret these words of the Gospel in the context of the way Jesus took in all its aspects a journey which, precisely, continues to the end of time in the destination, “Jerusalem”, we can discover various levels indicated.
Of course, first of all, it must be understood that this simply means the place, “Jerusalem”: it is the city in which God’s Temple stood, whose uniqueness must allude to the oneness of God himself. This place, therefore, proclaims two things: on the one hand it says that there is only one God in all the world, who exceeds by far all our places and times; he is that God to which the entire creation belongs. He is the God whom all men and women seek in their own depths, and of whom, in a certain way, they all have some knowledge.
But this God gave himself a Name. He made himself known to us, he initiated a history with human beings; he chose a man Abraham as the starting point of this history. The infinite God is at the same time the close God. He, who cannot be confined to any building, nevertheless wants to dwell among us, to be totally with us.
If Jesus, with the pilgrim Israel, goes up to Jerusalem, he goes there to celebrate with Israel the Passover: the memorial of Israel’s liberation a memorial which, at the same time, is always a hope of definitive freedom, which God will give.
And Jesus approaches this feast in the awareness that he himself is the Lamb in which will be accomplished what the Book of Exodus says in this regard: a lamb without blemish, a male, who at sunset, before the eyes of the children of Israel, is sacrificed “as an ordinance for ever” (cf. Ex 12: 5-6, 14). And lastly, Jesus knows that his way goes further: the Cross will not be his end.
He knows that his journey will rend the veil between this world and God’s world; that he will ascend to the throne of God and reconcile God and man in his Body He knows that his Risen Body will be the new sacrifice and the new Temple; that around him, from the hosts of Angels and Saints the new Jerusalem will be formed, that is in Heaven and yet also on the earth, because by his Passion he was to open the frontier between Heaven and earth. His way leads beyond the summit of the Mountain of the Temple to the heights of God himself: this is the great ascent to which he calls us all. He always remains with us on earth and he has always already arrived with God. He guides us on earth and beyond the earth.
Thus, the dimensions of our sequela become visible in the ascent of Jesus the goal to which he wants to lead us: to the heights of God, to communion with God, to being-with-God. This is the true destination and communion with him is the way to it. Communion with Christ is being on the way, a permanent ascent toward the true heights of our call.
Journeying on together with Jesus is at the same time also a journeying on in the “we” of those who want to follow him. It introduces us into this community. Since the way to true life, to being people in conformity with the model of the Son of God Jesus Christ, surpasses our own strength, this journey always means being carried. We find ourselves, so to speak, roped to Jesus Christ together with him on the ascent towards God’s heights. He pulls and supports us.
It is part of following Christ that we allow ourselves to be roped together; that we acknowledge we cannot do it alone. This act of humility, entering into the “we” of the Church is part of it; holding tight to the rope, the responsibility of communion not breaking the rope through stubbornness or self-importance. Humbly believing, with the Church, like being a roped-party on the ascent towards God, is an essential condition for the following of Christ. This being roped together also entails not behaving as masters of the Word of God, not running after a mistaken idea of emancipation.
The humility of “being with” is essential for the ascent. The fact that in the Sacraments we always let the Lord once again take us by the hand is also part of it; that we let ourselves be purified and strengthened by him; that we accept the discipline of the ascent, even when we are weary.
Lastly, we must say again: the Cross is also part of the ascent towards the heights of Jesus Christ, of the ascent to the heights of God. Just as in the affairs of this world it is impossible to achieve great results without self-sacrifice and hard work; just as joy in a great discovery of knowledge or in a true operational skill is linked to discipline, indeed, to the effort of learning, so the way toward life itself, to the realization of one’s own humanity, is linked to communion with the One who ascended to God’s heights through the Cross.
In the final analysis, the Cross is an expression of what love means: only those who lose themselves find themselves.
Let us sum up: the following of Christ requires, as a first step, a reawakening of the desire to be authentic human beings and thus the reawakening of oneself for God. It then requires us to join the climbing party, in the communion of the Church.
In the “we” of the Church we enter into communion with the “you” of Jesus Christ and thus reach the path to God. We are also asked to listen to the Word of Jesus Christ and to live it: in faith, hope and love. Thus we are on the way toward the definitive Jerusalem and, from this moment, in a certain way, we already find ourselves there, in the communion of all God’s Saints.
Our pilgrimage following Christ is not therefore bound for an earthly city, but for the new City of God that develops in the midst of this world. Yet the pilgrimage to the earthly Jerusalem can also be useful to us Christians for that more important journey. I myself linked three meanings to my pilgrimage in the Holy Land last year. First of all I thought that what St John says at the beginning of his First Letter can happen to us on such an occasion: that what we have heard, we can in a certain manner see and touch with our hands (cf. 1 Jn 1: 1).
Faith in Jesus Christ is not a legendary invention. It is based on a true story. This history we can, so to speak, contemplate and touch. It is moving to find oneself in Nazareth in the place where the Angel appeared to Mary and intimated to her the duty to become the Mother of the Redeemer.
It is moving to be in Bethlehem on the spot where the Word, made flesh, came to dwell among us; to walk on the holy ground in which God chose to become a man and a child. It is moving to climb the steps to Calvary, to the place where Jesus died for us on the Cross. And lastly, to stand before the empty sepulchre; to pray where his holy body rested and where, on the third day, the Resurrection occurred.
Following the exterior ways taken by Jesus must help us walk more joyfully and with new certainty on the interior way that he pointed out to us, that is he himself.
When we go to the Holy Land as pilgrims we also go, however and this is the second aspect as messengers of peace, with the prayer for peace; with the strong invitation to all to do our utmost in that place, which includes in its name the word “peace”, to make it truly become a place of peace. Thus this pilgrimage is at the same time as a third aspect an encouragement to Christians to stay in their country of origin and to work hard in it for peace.
Let us return once again to the Palm Sunday Liturgy. In the prayer with which the palms are blessed, we pray that in communion with Christ we may bear fruit with good works. Subsequent to an erroneous interpretation of St Paul, the opinion that good works are not part of being Christian or in any case are insignificant for the human being’s salvation has emerged time and again in the course of history and also today.
But if Paul says that works cannot justify man, with this he did not oppose the importance of right action and, if he speaks of the end of the Law, he does not say that the Ten Commandments are obsolete and irrelevant. There is no need now to reflect on the full breadth of the issue that concerned the Apostle.
What is important is to point out that with the term “Law” he does not mean the Ten Commandments but rather the complex way of life Israel had adopted to protect itself against the temptations of paganism. Now, however, Christ has brought God to the pagans. This form of distinction was not imposed upon them. They were given as the Law Christ alone. However, this means love of God and of neighbour and of everything that this entails.
The Commandments, interpreted in a new and deeper way starting from Christ, are part of this love, those Commandments are none other than the fundamental rules of true love: first of all, and as a fundamental principle, the worship of God, the primacy of God, which the first three Commandments express. They say: “without God nothing succeeds correctly. Who this God is and how he is we know from the person of Jesus Christ. Next come the holiness of the family (4th Commandment), the holiness of life (5th Commandment), the order of marriage (6th Commandment), the social order (7th Commandment), and lastly the inviolability of the truth (8th Commandment). Today all this is of the greatest timeliness and precisely also in St Paul’s meaning if we read all his Letters. “Bear fruit with good works”: at the beginning of Holy Week let us pray the Lord to grant us this fruit in ever greater abundance.
At the end of the Gospel for the blessing of the palms, we hear the acclamation with which the pilgrims greet Jesus at the Gates of Jerusalem. It takes up the words of Psalm 118 (117), which priests originally proclaimed to pilgrims from the Holy City but which, in the meantime had become an expression of messianic hope: “Blessed is he who enters in the Name of the Lord” (Ps 118[117]: 26; cf. Lk 19: 38).
Pilgrims see in Jesus the One who is to come in the Name of the Lord. Indeed, according to St Luke’s Gospel they insert one more word: “Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord”. And they continue with an acclamation that recalls the message of the Angels at Christmas, but change it in a manner that prompts reflection.
The Angels spoke of the glory of God in the highest and of peace on earth among men with whom he was pleased. The pilgrims at the entrance to the Holy City say: “Peace on earth and glory be to God in the highest!”. They know only too well that there is no peace on earth. And they know that the place of peace is Heaven they know that it is an essential part of Heaven to be a haven of peace. This acclamation is therefore an expression of profound suffering and, at the same time, a prayer of hope; may the One who comes in the Name of the Lord bring to the earth what there is in Heaven.
May his kingship become the kingship of God, the presence of Heaven on earth. The Church, before the Eucharistic consecration, sings the words of the Psalm with which Jesus was greeted before his entry into the Holy City: She greets Jesus as the King who, coming from God, comes among us in the Name of God. Today too, this joyous greeting is always a supplication and hope. Let us pray the Lord that he bring to us Heaven, the glory of God and peace among men. Let us understand this greeting in the spirit of the request in the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”.
We know that Heaven is Heaven, a place of glory and peace because the will of God totally prevails there. And we know that the earth will not be Heaven as long as God’s will is not done on it. Let us therefore greet Jesus who comes down from Heaven and pray him to help us to recognize and to do God’s will. May God’s kingship enter the world and thus be filled with the splendour of peace. Amen.
Pope Benedict XVI
Homily April 1, 2007 (PG 65, 772)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In the Palm Sunday procession we join with the crowd of disciples who in festive joy accompany the Lord during his entry into Jerusalem. Like them, we praise the Lord with a loud voice for all the miracles we have seen. Yes, we too have seen and still see today the wonders of Christ: how he brings men and women to renounce the comforts of their lives and devote themselves totally to the service of the suffering; how he gives men and women the courage to oppose violence and deceit, to make room for truth in the world; how, in secret, he persuades men and women to do good to others, to bring about reconciliation where there had been hatred and to create peace where enmity had reigned.
The procession is first and foremost a joyful witness that we bear to Jesus Christ, in whom the Face of God became visible to us and thanks to whom the Heart of God is open to us. In Luke’s Gospel, the account of the beginning of the procession in the vicinity of Jerusalem is in part modelled literally on the rite of coronation with which, according to the First Book of Kings, Solomon was invested as heir to David’s kingship (cf. I Kgs 1: 33-35).
Thus, the procession of the Palms is also a procession of Christ the King: we profess the Kingship of Jesus Christ, we recognize Jesus as the Son of David, the true Solomon, the King of peace and justice. Recognizing him as King means accepting him as the One who shows us the way, in whom we trust and whom we follow. It means accepting his Word day after day as a valid criterion for our life. It means seeing in him the authority to which we submit. We submit to him because his authority is the authority of the truth.
The procession of the Palms – as it was at that time for the disciples – is primarily an expression of joy because we are able to recognize Jesus, because he allows us to be his friends and because he has given us the key to life. This joy, however, which is at the beginning, is also an expression of our “yes” to Jesus and our willingness to go with him wherever he takes us. The exhortation with which our Liturgy today begins, therefore, correctly interprets the procession as a symbolic representation of what we call the “following of Christ”: “Let us ask for the grace to follow him”, we said. The expression “following of Christ” is a description of the whole of Christian existence. In what does it consist? What does “to follow Christ” actually mean?
At the outset, with the first disciples, its meaning was very simple and immediate: it meant that to go with Jesus these people decided to give up their profession, their affairs, their whole life. It meant undertaking a new profession: discipleship. The fundamental content of this profession was accompanying the Teacher and total entrustment to his guidance. The “following” was therefore something external, but at the same time very internal. The exterior aspect was walking behind Jesus on his journeys through Palestine; the interior aspect was the new existential orientation whose reference points were no longer in events, in work as a source of income or in the personal will, but consisted in total abandonment to the will of Another. Being at his disposal, henceforth, became the raison d’être of life. In certain Gospel scenes we can recognize quite clearly that this means the renouncement of one’s possessions and detachment from oneself.
But with this it is also clear what “following” means for us and what its true essence is for us: it is an interior change of life. It requires me no longer to be withdrawn into myself, considering my own fulfilment the main reason for my life. It requires me to give myself freely to Another – for truth, for love, for God who, in Jesus Christ, goes before me and shows me the way. It is a question of the fundamental decision no longer to consider usefulness and gain, my career and success as the ultimate goals of my life, but instead to recognize truth and love as authentic criteria. It is a question of choosing between living only for myself or giving myself – for what is greater. And let us understand properly that truth and love are not abstract values; in Jesus Christ they have become a person. By following him, I enter into the service of truth and love. By losing myself I find myself.
Let us return to the liturgy and the procession of the Palms. In it the Liturgy has provided as the hymn Psalm 24[23]. In Israel this was also a processional hymn used in the ascent to the hill of the temple. The Psalm interprets the interior ascent, of which the exterior ascent is an image, and explains to us once again what it means to ascend with Christ. “Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord?” the Psalm asks and specifies two essential conditions. Those who ascend it and truly desire to reach the heights, to arrive at the true summit, must be people who question themselves about God. They must be people who scan their surroundings seeking God, seeking his Face.
Dear young friends, how important precisely this is today: not merely to let oneself be taken here and there in life; not to be satisfied with what everyone else thinks and says and does. To probe God and to seek God. Not letting the question about God dissolve in our souls; desiring what is greater, desiring to know him – his Face…
The other very concrete condition for the ascent is this: He “who has clean hands and a pure heart” can stand in the holy place. Clean hands are hands that are not used for acts of violence. They are hands that are not soiled with corruption, with bribery. A pure heart – when is the heart pure? A heart is pure when it does not pretend and is not stained with lies and hypocrisy: a heart that remains transparent like spring water because it is alien to duplicity. A heart is pure when it does not estrange itself with the drunkenness of pleasure, a heart in which love is true and is not only a momentary passion. Clean hands and a pure heart: if we walk with Jesus, we ascend and find the purification that truly brings us to that height to which man is destined: friendship with God himself.
Psalm 24[23], which speaks of the ascent, ends with an entrance liturgy in front of the temple gate: “Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in”. In the old liturgy for Palm Sunday, the priest, arriving in front of the church, would knock loudly with the shaft of the processional cross on the door that was still closed; thereupon, it would be opened. This was a beautiful image of the mystery of Jesus Christ himself who, with the wood of his Cross, with the power of his love that is given, knocked from the side of the world at God’s door; on the side of a world that was not able to find access to God. With his Cross, Jesus opened God’s door, the door between God and men. Now it is open. But the Lord also knocks with his Cross from the other side: he knocks at the door of the world, at the doors of our hearts, so many of which are so frequently closed to God. And he says to us something like this: if the proof that God gives you of his existence in creation does not succeed in opening you to him, if the words of Scripture and the Church’s message leave you indifferent, then look at me – the God who let himself suffer for you, who personally suffers with you – and open yourself to me, your Lord and your God.
It is this appeal that we allow to penetrate our hearts at this moment. May the Lord help us to open the door of our hearts, the door of the world, so that he, the living God, may arrive in his Son in our time, and reach our life. Amen.
St. John Chrysostom
Homily 1 on the cross and the brigand for Good Friday, 2; PG 49, 401
“When you come into your kingdom”
Today paradise, closed for thousands of years, is opened to us. On this day, at this very hour, God brings the brigand into it. Thus he fulfills two wonders: he opens up paradise to us and causes a thief to enter in. Today God has given us back our former homeland, today he has brought us into the city of our ancestors, today he has opened up a home to be shared by all humanity. “This day,” he says, “you will be with me in paradise”. What are you saying, Lord? You are crucified, nailed down, and do you promise paradise? Yes, he says, so that through the cross you may learn my power…
Because it isn’t by raising a dead man, commanding the sea and wind, or casting out demons that he is able to change the thief’s sinful soul, but by being crucified, pinned down by nails, covered with insults, spitting, mockery and torture, so that you might see the two sides of his sovereign power. He shook all creation, split the rocks (Mt 27:51) and drew to himself the brigand’s soul, hard as stone, to cover it with honor…
Obviously, no king would ever allow a brigand or other of his subjects to be seated at his side when making his entry into his city. Yet Christ did so when entering his holy homeland. He brings a brigand into it along with him. In so doing… he does no dishonor to it by a brigand’s presence for it is a glory for paradise that it has a master able to make a brigand worthy of the joys to be tasted there. In the same way, when he brings publicans and prostitutes into the Kingdom of heaven (Mt 21:31)…, it is for the sake of the glory of that holy place. Because he shows it that the Lord of the heavenly Kingdom is so great that he can restore all their dignity to prostitutes and publicans even to their being worthy of this honor and this gift. We admire a doctor all the more when we see him heal people suffering from illnesses said to be incurable. So it is only right to admire Christ… when he restores publicans and prostitutes to such a state of spiritual health that they become worthy of heaven.
