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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 we are not so alien 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 not his life, because no-one was about to kill him,
to be rejected simply, 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 of 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 watch 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. |
