Palm Sunday

March 25, 2018

For many years we used the Gethsemani “Great Week Book” for Holy Week liturgy, and I still love to read over part of the introduction before Palm Sunday, an introduction I would guess was written by Father Chrysogonus. It reads, “The New Testament Reality Made Present In Our Community: ‘Behold, to Jerusalem you came, a meek king, sitting on a donkey. Come then, we ask, come also unto us! Halt in our midst, that we may feel your coming in our hearts. You once restored us through the Cross: through that same blessed Passion once more restore us, fallen as we are!’” How perfectly that captures the mystery of the liturgy. Liturgy is not involved with memories of past events, but rather with participation in eternal mysteries, in this case the mystery of Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem the last week of his life. We are as present as the first crowd; we are there, he is here, in the one eternal Palm Sunday with its grace stretching to the end of the world.

And now Jesus halts in our midst. He looks at the crowd, the immediate one and beyond it the crowd of every new generation up to our very own. He looks into each one of our hearts this day; he gazes into each human heart with so much tenderness, he who desires to gather us together as chicks under his wings. He sees in our hearts what is true and what is false, what is weak and what is strong, what is weed and what is wheat. He doesn’t want to root up the weeds too quickly lest he lose the wheat in us, lest we not have enough chance to grow and change. He doesn’t want to dismay the weakness in us by demanding strength before we are really strong. We are all of us both false and true, all of us both weak and strong, all of us both weeds and wheat. That’s why I always render “bear with false brethren” as bear with what is false in the brothers and sisters. On Palm Sunday Jesus could hear the truth in his disciples’ cries of joy as they recognized him as the blessed One coming in the name of the Lord, yet he also saw the falseness that would emerge in them at the end of the week. He sees both in us too. But he bears with us because he wants us so much to make it and to be with him forever. Let’s learn to gaze at one another with this same tenderness of Christ who knows our weakness and falseness but who waits and prays so patiently for our true selves to emerge. To bear with what is false in others is to share in the patience of Christ in a most profound way.

But, you may wonder, what about someone as false as Judas was false? St. Augustine has a wonderful reflection on this in his exposition of Psalm 55 as he puts these words into Jesus’ mouth: “I too had one like that in my company; I trod that path before you, I endured it. I willingly put up with it in full awareness, so as to encourage you, who have no such awareness. What the traitor did to me he will do to you as well.” And yet, even in this case, we are encouraged to hope rather than to judge the other hopeless. Augustine continues, “…you must pray for them, and not say, ‘Is God ever going to straighten out someone like that, such a bad and perverted person?’ Do not give up hope. Keep your eyes on the One to whom you make the plea, not the one for whom you make it. You see the gravity of the disease, but do you not see the power of the physician? You will save them, Lord, as though it cost you nothing, as though no effort on your part were required. Human resources offered no hope for them at all, but you cure them with a word; you expend no labor in curing them, though we are amazed as we look on.” Even in this case then, we are called to the greatest patience, called to pray for the other with great hope that the Lord will heal. Jesus gives us no way out if we are to be truly his disciples. We are not to give up on anyone just as he never gave up on us.