A Holy Gospel reflection for Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion
This Palm Sunday, would you join in a simple yet revealing spiritual exercise? It involves plunging whole-heartedly into the Gospel and imagining yourself among the crowds that came to celebrate Easter in Jerusalem, and as it says in the Gospel of John, “to learn that Jesus is coming.”
The idea is to be more concretely among “the hordes of people” who Mark says, “spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread leafy branches they had cut in the fields.” Let us meditate at length on this and allow ourselves to connect spiritually with the event as closely as possible.
Who, we ask, is this Galilean arriving in the Holy City? Would you be among those who strode ahead to meet him or those who followed? Would your voice join those who sang out “Hosanna in the highest” or would you have been among the silent onlookers startled by the scenes of jubilation? Would you have stood back in admiration of the strange new Messiah or influenced by those who were prejudiced against him? Would you have been a pilgrim or a dawdler? Indeed, have you ever humbly asked in your prayers which kind of behavior you would have shown towards Jesus on this remarkable day?
It is relatively easy to retell the change of heart among the people that took place between Palm Sunday and the Passion without implicating oneself in the call to conversion clearly contained in Holy Week. No one can claim to have unsullied hands. However, to confess with humility that today our hands would have carried palms and that on Friday they would have held the reeds of Golgotha is to begin to allow Christ’s unconditional love to bloom in our hearts.
We cannot judge the crowds in Jerusalem as if their hysteria and change of mood did not precede our own lack of faith. Did they sink from clear-sighted faith into disbelief in just a few days? Was it not that they had long been guided and manipulated by those who were evidently against Jesus? The hopes for a messiah that many held for that Jewish Easter was impeded by a myriad of calculations. We cannot judge the crowds at Jerusalem as if our own belief and prayers were not occasionally weighed down by skepticism and fear.
They were never completely clear in the way they felt about Jesus of Nazareth, yet he was always the infinitely loving and compassionate shepherd, teacher and healer. Our faith has never been exempt from doubt, yet in return Jesus always showed us mercy so that our hearts may always be filled with hope. We poor souls on earth will forever be indebted to Him.
The “Hosanna” is now ours. The church has handed it over and it is transmitted from generation to generation. Acclamation is addressed to Jesus, before which we feel so small. We feel the vibration of hearts whose fragile faith leaves our gaze transfixed on His image.
Palm Sunday is a ritual that brings together many who do not participate in more regular liturgical services. Our need to be blessed by the protective branches should of course be guided and evangelized. But will we be granted a sign so that we never think we know all there is to know about Christ? Just as the crowds would have met Jesus were full of contradictions, the palms remind us of the poverty of our own vanity when we do not recognize the Son of Man coming to us on the back of a donkey.
“Look at me,” said the Lord to Angela of Foligno, “Do you see anything that is not Love?”
Throughout this Holy Week, may we look at Him with great clarity. All will be Love, boundless and for each and every one.
