April 13th, Reflection for Palm Sunday

When I was a Deacon in Ascension, I was given the task to minister to Adoración Nocturna (Night Adoration). Once a month, I would do solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with them and join them for an hour in adoring our Lord in the Eucharist. Once in a while, they would ask me to do a small procession with the Blessed Sacrament. It was always a great experience to live out a Eucharistic devotion with this group. When my time at the parish had come to an end, I met with them to thank them for their patience and their witness to the faith. They thanked me in returned. But in that moment, I remembered the entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem. Our Lord enters into Jerusalem seated on a donkey. The attention of the crowd wasn't on the donkey, but rather on Christ. In a similar way, the attention of my ministry with this group is on Christ. I was simply the vessel, the “donkey”, that the Lord chose to come to an encounter with his people.

Today we celebrate the Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, also known as Palm Sunday. It marks the beginning of Holy Week which is the central event to our faith and salvation history. In today's liturgy, we remember two things: the Passion of Christ and the entrance of our Lord into Jerusalem. The two are closely connected since the entrance into Jerusalem is the beginning of the end for our Lord's public ministry, which culminates in the passion, crucifix and death. Jerusalem, the holy city of God, joyously receives her king today. The crowds gather and sing hymns of praise to God upon seeing our salvation close at hand. But the King that they expect does not enter the holy city with an army, or riches, or earthly power. He does not stand proud of his temporal accomplishments. He does not boast of nations that he has violently placed under his rule. Rather, the expected King enters on a lowly donkey, a beast of burden. He enters seated on humility and clothed with righteousness. This is to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament, namely that of Zechariah 9:9, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” They expected a worldly king, but instead, they got a humble King that later will take the Cross as his throne.

We at times can have a distorted view of who Christ is. Like the audience at the entrance into Jerusalem and the crucifixion, we can come to accept Christ and choose to follow him and turn away from him when life becomes difficult, when he isn't the Christ that we expected him to be. This can be evident in the way we treat our neighbors. With those who are “easy to love” it is very easy to recognize the Lord in them. But how often do we wish to crucify our Lord in our brothers and sisters who we hate. I once read a reflection on Palm Sunday that suggested that the same crowd that received our Lord with joyful songs was the same crowd that yelled “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We ourselves can be placed in that crowd by the way that we love and hate God and our neighbor. We, like the colt, should carry our Lord throughout our lives. We cannot make ourselves the center of faith but always remember Who we are to carry and Who we are to let be the center of our lives. The way that we live our lives, the way that we interact with our neighbors, the way that we practice our faith should always be to carry Christ where he is most needed. Today, my dear brothers and sisters, we ask our Lord to give us the grace to be those vessels that he can use to enter into the lives of others in humility and righteousness.