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In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Today, in the day of Palms we stand in
awe and amazement before what is happening in a way in which the Jews of
Jerusalem could not meet Christ. Because they met Him imagining that He
was the glorious king who would now take over all power, conquer and
reject the heathen, the Romans who were occupying their country, that He
would re-establish a kingdom, an earthly kingdom of Israel. We know that
He had not come for that, He had come to establish a Kingdom that will
have no end, a Kingdom of eternity, and the Kingdom that was not open
only to one nation but was open to all nations, and the Kingdom that was
to be founded on the life and on the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God become the Son of man.
And Holy Week is from one end to another
a time of tragic confusion. The Jews meet Christ at the gates of
Jerusalem because they expect of Him a triumphant military leader, and
He comes to serve, to wash the feet of His disciples, to give His life
for the people but not to conquer by force, by power. And the same
people who meet Him shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” in a few
days will shout, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” because He has betrayed
their expectations. They expected an earthly victory and what they see
is a defeated king. They hate Him for the disappointment of all their
hopes.
And this is not so alien to us in our
days. How many are those people who have turn away in hatred from Christ
because He has disappointed one hope or another. I remember a woman who
had been a believer for all her life and whose grandson died, a little
boy, and she said to me, “I don’t believe in God anymore. How could He
take my grandson?” And I said to her, “But you believed in God while
thousands and thousands and millions of people died.” And she looked at
me and said, “Yes, but what did that do to me? I didn’t care, they were
not my children.” This is something that happens to us in a small degree
so often that we waver in our faith and in our faithfulness to God when
something which we expect Him to do for us is not done, when He is not
an obedient servant, when we proclaim our will, He does not say, “Amen,”
and does not do it. So it is not so alien that we are from those who met
Christ at the gates of Jerusalem and then turned away from Him.
But we are entering now in Holy Week.
How can we face the events? I think we must enter into Holy Week not as
observers, not reading the passages of the Gospel which are relevant, we
must enter into Holy Week as though we were participants of the events,
indeed read of them but then mix in the crowd that surrounds Christ and
ask ourselves, Who am I in this crowd? Am I one of those who said,
‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’? And am I now on the fringe of saying,
‘Crucify him’? Am I one of the disciples who were faithful until the
moments of ultimate danger came upon them? You remember that in the
Garden of Gethsemane three disciples had been singled out for Christ to
support Him at the hour of His supreme agony, and they did not, they
were tired, they were desponded and they fell asleep. Three times He
came to them for support, three times they were away from Him.
We do not meet Christ in the same
circumstances but we meet so many people who are in agony, not only
dying physically, and that also happens to our friends, our relatives,
people around us, but are in agony of terror one way or another. Are we
there awake, alive, attentive to them, ready to help them out, and if we
can’t help, to be with them, to stand by them? or do we fall asleep,
that is, contract out, turn away, leave them in their agony, their fear,
their misery? And again I am not speaking of Judas because no-one of us
is aware of betraying Christ in such a way, but don’t we betray Christ
when we turn away from all His commandments? When He says, “I give you
an example for you to follow,” and we shake our heads and say, “No, I
will simply follow the devices of my own heart.” But think of Peter,
apparently the strongest, the one who spoke time and again in the name
of others. When it came to risking his life, not his life, to be
rejected simply, because no-one was about to kill him, he denied Christ
three times.
What do we do when we are challenged in
the same way, when we are in danger of being mocked and ridiculed and
put aside by our friends or our acquaintances who shrug their shoulders
and say, “A Christian? And you believe in that? And you believe that
Christ was God, and you believe in His Gospel, and you are on His side?”
How often? O, we don’t say, “No, we are not,” but do we say, “Yes, it is
my glory, and if you want to crucify Him, if you want to reject Him,
reject me too because I choose to stand by Him, I am His disciple, even
if I am to be rejected, even if you don’t let me into your house
anymore.”
And think of the crowd on Calvary. There
were people who had been instrumental in His condemnation, they mocked
Him, they had won their victory, so they thought at least. And then
there were the soldiers, the soldiers who crucified Him, they had
crucified innumerable other people, they were doing their job. It didn’t
matter to them whom they crucified. And yet Christ prayed for them,
“Forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they are doing.” We are not
being crucified physically, but do we say, “Forgive, Father, those who
offend us, who humiliate us, who reject us, those who kill our joy and
darken our life in us.” Do we do that? No, we don’t. So we must
recognise ourselves in them also.
And then there was a crowd of people who
had poured out to the city to see a man die, the fierce curiosity that
pushes so many of us to be curious when suffering, agony comes upon
people. You will say, it doesn’t happen? Ask yourself how you look at
television and how eagerly, hungrily you look at the horrors that befall
Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia and every other country. Is it with a broken
heart? Is it that you can not endure the horror and turn in prayer to
God and then give, give, give generously all you can give for hunger and
misery to be alleviated? Is it? No, we are the same people who came out
on Calvary to see a man die. Curiosity, interest? Yes, alas.
And then there were those who had come
with the hope that He will die because if He died on the cross, then
they were free from this terrifying, horrible message He had brought
that we must love one another to the point of being ready to die for
each other. That message of the crucified, sacrificial love could be
rejected once and for all if He who preached it, died, and it was proved
that He was a false prophet, a liar.
And then there were those who had come
in the hope that He will come down from the cross, and then they could
be believers without any risk, they would have joint the victorious
party. Aren’t we like that so often?
And then there is a point to which we
hardly should dare turn our eyes – the Mother of the Incarnate Son of
God, the Mother of Jesus silent, offering His death for the salvation of
mankind, silent and dying with Him hour after hour; and the disciple who
knew in a youthful way how to love his master, standing by in horror,
seeing his Master die and the Mother in agony. Are we like this when we
read the Gospel, are we like this when we see the agony of men around us?
Let us therefore enter in this Holy Week in order not to
be observers of what happened then, let us enter into it mixed with the
crowd and at every step ask ourselves, who am I in this crowd? Am I the
Mother? Am I the disciple? Am I one of the crucifiers? And so forth. And
then we will be able to meet the day of the Resurrection together with
those to whom it was life and resurrection indeed, when despair had gone,
new hope had come, God had conquered. Amen. |
