We have prepared for forty days to step into this most sacred of weeks, where we commemorate and relive the most profound mysteries of life and death of God and man, of love and sin.
The first reading from Isaiah contains the prophecy of the suffering servant, which is fulfilled in Jesus. He was sent by the Father to take all the sins of world upon Himself and undergo unheard of sufferings in order to ransom us from death and slavery to evil, to open Heaven and bring the Kingdom of God upon the earth. Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday. The word passion comes from the Latin word “Passio” which means suffering, undergoing something. Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly as the Messiah to fulfil His mission because the stakes are our salvation through His sacrifice on the Cross.
In the second reading St Paul teaches that although Jesus was the Son of God, made flesh, He became a slave to teach us humility and obedience because the root of all sin is pride. Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a borrowed donkey colt, a useful beast of burden, not an impressive war horse. The donkey is like the Christian virtue of humility, by which we lower ourselves to raise up others and serve them. St Paul teaches about the kenosis or self-emptying of Christ. Jesus rides the virtue of humility through this sinful world in order to blaze a path for us into Heaven. The crowds lined the roads and shouted: Hosanna which means “save us”
There is no love like the love of God. Jesus would exchange His life to pay the ransom for us. In the Mass, He comes to us through the most humble appearance of wafers of bread, flimsy looking and fragile, but the reality beneath the appearance is Jesus. At the Last Supper when He instituted the Eucharist, He received Himself first so it would be possible for us to receive our God, in Holy Communion.
The only way the Sanhedrin could get Jesus killed was through a religious trial and then a civil trial before Pilate who had the authority to condemn Jesus to death. Pilate put his position as Governor before doing the Divine Will and he condemned Jesus to death on a cross.
Let’s enter deeply into the liturgies of Holy Week. Jesus said to St Faustina:
There is more merit in one hour of meditation on my sorrowful Passion than a whole year of flagellation that draws blood. (Diary, 369).
He said that
He gives great graces to souls that meditate on His Passion.
The liturgy is a dependable vehicle, like the donkey that brings Jesus truly present to us. Turn off the TV and reduce your time on the internet this week and enter fully into the profound mysteries of our Redemption in the holiest week of the year.