To read the texts click on the texts: Isa 50:4-7; Phil 2:6-11; Mt 26:14 - 27:66
In the past, the fifth
Sunday of Lent (the Sunday before Palm Sunday) was known as Passion Sunday.
However, following Vatican II, the sixth Sunday of Lent was officially re-named
Passion Sunday. This Sunday is also called Palm Sunday, since palm branches are
still distributed but the focus is on the betrayal, arrest, suffering and
crucifixion of Jesus rather than on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem just
before his death. Passion/Palm Sunday is the start of Holy Week in which the
Church commemorates the Last Supper and the first Eucharist on Holy Thursday
and Christ's death on Good Friday. What Jesus experiences for us is a
manifestation of God's overwhelming love for each one of us. Further, by our identifying ourselves with
the 'mystery' of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection we ourselves
experience a great liberation, a 'Passover' from various forms of sin and
enslavement to a life of joy and freedom.
Today's liturgy combines
both a sense of “triumph” and “tragedy”. At the beginning, we commemorate the
triumph of Christ our King. This is done
through the blessing of palms, the procession and the singing. In the liturgy
of the word, we hear the story of the sufferings and indignities to which Jesus
was subjected. However, we keep in mind that even in this “tragedy” there is
“triumph”. This is because Christ came for precisely this purpose, to save in
and through his death.
The first reading for the
liturgy of the Eucharist is from the prophet Isaiah. The part of Isaiah written
in exile (Chapters 40-55) contains four servant songs, sections that interrupt
the flow of the book but have a unity within themselves. The first (42:1-7)
begins “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen ...”; in the second
(49:1-7) the servant, abused and humiliated, is commissioned anew; in the third
(our first reading) he is disciplined and strengthened by suffering; and in the
fourth that will be read on Good Friday (52:17-53:12), even the Gentiles are in
awesome contemplation before the suffering and rejected servant. In late
Judaism, the suffering servant of Yahweh was seen as the perfect Israelite, one
of supreme holiness, a messiah. In the gospels, Jesus identifies himself as the
servant, the one who frees all people. He will accept like the servant of
Isaiah without rebellion and in total obedience God’s will for him. Even in his
suffering and ignominy, he is confident that God will vindicate him.
This vindication and
exaltation forms the last part of the kenosis hymn of Paul. The hymn summarizes
the whole of salvation history succinctly. It begins with the pre existence of
Christ, moves on to the incarnation and mission and then narrates his passion
and death on the cross before speaking of his resurrection and exaltation.
However, there is no room for triumphalism here! There is no room for a
feel-good religion that does not take its servant role seriously. There is no
room for a victory that does not first know the "fellowship of His
sufferings" on behalf of others; no room for piety that does not pour out,
yes, even totally empty, oneself for the interests of others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the
German theologian who poured out his own life at the hands of the Nazis because
he refused to allow the church to be the tool of oppression, wrote: “The church
is the church only when it exists for others. . . . The church must share in
the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and
serving. . . . It must not underestimate the importance of human example which
has its origin in the humanity of Jesus.”
We who profess holiness need the unity of mind
and purpose to which Paul is calling the Philippians. We need to see ourselves
in terms of our obligations to the community of those "in Christ" of
which we claim to be a part. Maybe we need to see ourselves less in terms of
"those who never sin" and more in terms of "those who serve”.
Maybe we need to see ourselves in terms of the Servant-Christ, the "man
for others" who bends himself to struggle for the wholeness and healing of
a wounded world." Maybe we need to re-examine our own value structures that
have been so subtly shaped by the success-oriented society around us. We need
to see if we are acting in a manner worthy of the heavenly citizenship we
claim. For Paul, to claim that citizenship meant to have a mind-set different
from others. It meant a commitment to servanthood, a life poured out in service
to others, totally emptied of self.
This passion story arrests
us because in it we find God coming to us in utter vulnerability. God seems
absent and silent. He does not act in might, power and vengeance to stop sinful
people from doing their worst to Jesus his Son. It looks as if God has
abandoned his own beloved Son. Why doesn't God do something? Where is God when
a righteous Son is gasping for air on a Roman cross? Why is God silent? Why
does he not send ten thousand angels and save his son? God remains silent until
the fury of human defiance and sin carries out to the fullest extent its
gruesome imaginations. When the life of the Son of God is snuffed out, it is
then that God speaks. He speaks loud and clear. He speaks not in vengeance,
counter-attack and destruction. God does not kill Pilate, the Roman soldiers,
the high priests and the passers-by. Instead, he splits a curtain and makes
himself open and available and teaches that true worship is now no longer in
the Temple or sanctuary, but on the cross. It is at that point that the Roman
soldiers realize how pitiful and puny they are and all their bravado melts and the
Centurion proclaims, "Truly this man was God’s Son!" God acts in
strange ways.
How did Jesus save us? Was it because he suffered and died for
us? Was it because he made the ultimate
sacrifice? Was it not because, in the
words of the from Philippians, he "emptied himself" totally and in so
doing became filled with the Spirit of his Father? He clung to nothing; he let go of everything.
Do we have the courage to do likewise?
paragraph 6 mirrors your history,n
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