PALM SUNDAY - Luke 19:28-40
With Palm Sunday we start a very special time in the Christian calendar, which we call Holy Week - a week consecrated to the remembrance and celebration of Jesus’ life and specially of his passion, death and resurrection. It is a week in which our hearts and minds move around Jesus Christ.
We start in a joyous mood with the Palm procession, but that quickly gives place to grief and sorrow, which goes together with the awareness of sin in our lives and in our society. The power of evil is present everywhere and most of the time seems to have the upper hand. But that Friday, when Jesus died on the cross, is not called a black Friday, instead we call it a Good Friday, because Jesus’ faithfulness was the way to his victory. We will end the Holy Week with the big feast of Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ victory.
Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. As the approached the city, people coming from all over Palestine and beyond would start forming crowds walking together and would enter Jerusalem singing, at same time being welcome by the people living in the city. Being recognised as a prophet, Jesus became the centre of people’s attention. As they acclaimed him as the Messiah, they called for his intervention.
People shouted Hosanna! The word was misunderstood already in the first Christian communities: “Hosanna in the highest heaven” (Mk 11:10), in which the word is taken as an acclamation of glory. However, hosanna was a cry for deliverance: Save, please! Save, we beseech (Ps 118:25). It was the cry address to Jesus as the Messiah, a cry which was considered as a cry of revolt against the Roman occupation. That’s why within a week, the leaders got rid of him, having him crucified.
In this Palm Sunday, we are called to acclaim Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah and to call upon him to save us. However, crowds turn with the wind: they acclaim you today and tomorrow they shout you down. And we are part of those crowds. It was so with the Apostles, and so it is with us. With easiness and sometimes without regret, we turn our backs on Jesus Christ. At least, we can learn with Peter to come back and cry tears of repentance.
Hosanna! Pleas, save us!
No comments:
Post a Comment