DIVINE EXAMPLE OF HUMILITY

PALM SUNDAY

Isa 50:4-7; Ps 22:8-9,17-20,23-24; Phil 2:6-11; Lk 22:14-23:56

He Delivered Himself to Death for the Love of Us

We celebrate Palm Sunday today. This celebration has its importance and significance. The Church follows the events of our salvation as her Saviour and Lord lived them. The events of Palm Sunday and their celebration bring our focus to the willingness of the Son of Man to suffer for us. His foreknowledge of his coming passion and divine power with which he could have evaded or prevented his suffering and death if he so wished proves the willingness of our Lord to suffer for us. These highlights are essential to drive home the lesson of humility, which is the foundation of our reception of the salvation he worked for us. Thus, the opening ceremony of the blessing of the palms and procession thereafter has the reading from the gospel of Luke. The Son of Man, who ordinarily evades occasions of praise and adulation, acted to the contrary on this occasion. He prepared the disciples and nudged them to sing and exalt him as the Son of David and Messiah. With foreknowledge, he sent them to fetch a colt from the village on which he was to ride. They went and found everything as he told them. “And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their garments on the colt they set Jesus upon it. And as he rode along, they spread their garments on the road.” The multitude rejoiced and sang in his praise, glorifying God for the Messiah he sent.

We must not be surprised that the Lord wanted the people to praise and exalt him as the Messiah, for all he did was in fulfilment of the Scriptures. Because the Son of Man lived in total conformity with the will of the Father, he is the King of Righteousness and Peace. Thus, he had every right to ride into Jerusalem, the city of peace, as its true king. Therefore, he disagreed with the Pharisees, who wanted him to silence the people singing his praise. “And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.’” The stones would cry out to fulfil the most holy will of the Father. What is necessary is not what the Son of Man wants or the Pharisees, but that we do the will of the Father. The lesson for us is that we must always submit our wills and personal preferences to the will of the Father. The whole of creation exists to do the will of the Father. The readings for the Palm Sunday consolidate this lesson for us. Isaiah says everyone called to the discipleship of the word of God receives the gift of an open ear and a disciple’s tongue to enunciate God’s will. “The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue. So that I may know how to reply to the weary, he provides me with speech. Each morning, he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear.” By this open ear, the Word lives in us, and by the disciple’s tongue, he reveals the Father to all through us.

Because the Son of Man is the Eternal Word in our nature, he is the first and greatest disciple of the Father. Saint Paul reveals this great truth about the Word in his letter to the Philippians. “His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” The great revelation here is about the humble state of the Son of God and the path he trod to achieve our salvation. The great condescension of the Son reveals the foundation of human salvation. No one is exempted from walking this same path, for it is the expression of the will of the Father. It is the foundation of the spiritual edifice of human salvation and heavenly Jerusalem because it achieves the death of self and the emptying of human hearts for God to occupy his throne in us.

Without the death of the false self or false human nature conceived in the darkness of demonic lies, God cannot enter and save the human person. In his human nature, the Eternal Word shows us how to attain the original glory God destined for us in his paradise. The constant meditation on the paschal mysteries prepares and keeps us ever ready to walk his humble path. We must walk the path of death with the Son of Man to enter into glory with him. “But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” We have dwelt much on the paschal mysteries and the need to constantly dwell on them as a path leading to the City of God. The school of discipleship described by the prophet Isaiah is the school of meditation on the paschal mysteries. We attend this school through recitation of the Rosary. The holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary contains the paschal mysteries constituting the summary of our Saviour's life, death, and resurrection. Little wonder the salvific effects the recitation of the Rosary has on souls.

In conclusion, the Passion narrative launches us into the paschal celebration of the Lamb of God. The narrative reveals God’s foreknowledge of all things and how his divine will orders all for the good of the faithful. It shows the presence of divinity in the trial, suffering, passion, and death of the Son of Man; it reveals our common weakness as sharers in the fallen human nature, for we see ourselves as the betrayers of the Son of Man; it also shows the love and mercy of God the Father who allowed his Son to come among us, suffer and die for our salvation. The passion narrative presents an opportunity for us to be beneath the cross of the Lord and repent of our sins and the pride that kept us away from the love of the Father. The Holy Week is for better meditation and internalisation of these mysteries of our salvation. May the grace of God be sufficient for us to participate with gain in these sacred mysteries.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who as an example of humility for the human race to follow caused our Saviour to take flesh and submit to the Cross, graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering and so merit a share in his Resurrection. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.