Palm Sunday 2022
Year C – Luke
To those who come to arrest him, Jesus declares: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” At first sight, it could seem that He can do nothing; the fatal steps of His Passion await Him like a programme prepared for Him of which He cannot change anything. But in fact, could He avoid it, He would not. His decision is made. His ‘Yes’ to the will of the Father has been said. He will not oppose power to power. He will fight neither with human weapons nor with angelic hosts, but with filial obedience. To our lies, He will oppose His truth; to our pride, His humility; to our doubts, His unfailing trust; to our passion for our own will, His accomplishment of the will of the Father; to the death our sins have prepared for Him, the total gift of His life.
He will empty Himself, He will humble Himself and let himself be utterly humiliated. Herod will mock Him. Pilate will condemn Him against his own conscience. Those who acclaimed Him when He entered the Holy City, will see Him out to the place of His death. He will resolutely walk the way to Calvary, a way which is paved with injustice, sufferings, slander, reviling and railing. Jesus will walk it both resolutely and kindly – with the inner peace which can sometimes fill even our wounded hearts when something in us has decided to love to the end, whatever the cost.
They crucify Him, together with two criminals. At a level which is deeper than the excruciating pain, His Heart overflows with mercy: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” This word is as new today as it was then. It is a revolution: a persecuted just man is calling to the just God and asking Him not for vengeance, but to overcome evil by mercy. For Jesus knows, and wants us to know, that there is a divine Heart which overflows with a love able to create goodness where sin has introduced evil and to give life even where death is at work. Sin and death are swallowed by the storm of merciful love which quietly issues from the Heart of Jesus. – And even us, sinners as we are, can sometimes know the strength of forgiveness able to renew our own hearts and to make us love our enemies. How good it feels to be able to look at an offender with a new heart, without any resentment, with the sheer gratuitousness of love!
An unusual darkness covers the whole land from the sixth to the ninth hour. One suddenly hears the great cry of a voice saying: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Jesus does not abandon His Father at any moment. He remains constantly with Him. He opposes to the destructive power of death the divine life which He receives from His Father. He has agreed to lose everything, even His own human life, so as to manifest to the world the bond of life and love which unites Him to the Father. – Have we not sometimes been given to experience the strength of trust, stronger than suffering, stronger that death?
Jesus humbles Himself. Jesus forgives. Jesus trusts. Above all, Jesus obeys. He is not simply undergoing passively situations He cannot change. He makes Himself obedient unto death. All His energies are focussed on living out the ‘Yes’ He said in the garden at each step of His way of the Cross, up to the last one. He lets the Father do with His human life whatever the Father wants in His loving wisdom. Jesus is reduced to nothing but a constant, kind and loving ‘Yes’ to His Father. He has made Himself totally available for the will of His Father so that life, through His death and His resurrection, be given to the world. – And even we are sometimes given the victory of humble obedience: when we are faithful to the end, when we say ‘Yes’ to all the Providential circumstances in our lives.
Jesus so loved the world that He gave himself to the Father who was giving Him, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. To the power of darkness, in our hearts, in our world, God opposes the sheer gift of life. This is prepared for those who work at giving up the pride of life and walking the humble way of obedience. They humble themselves, they forgive, they trust. They take up their cross daily and follow Christ with an ‘unutterable sweetness of love’, with the kindness of Jesus in St Luke’s Passion.