PALM
SUNDAY (Year B)
(Isaiah
50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 15:1-39)
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The Passion and Death of Jesus which you have just heard according
to St. Mark’s Gospel contains a striking passage which most probably comes from
Peter himself, generally regarded as the source of Mark’s Gospel. St. Matthew,
also, when writing his own Gospel memories, closely followed St. Mark’s account
and Peter’s words.
People of God, we must never forget that though John is
universally recognized as the disciple Jesus loved, Peter was the one who actually
loved Jesus most, as John himself tells us (21:15):
Simon, Simon, do you love Me more
than these? Yes, Lord, You know that I
love You
Here is that striking passage which both St. Mark (Peter) and
St. Matthew tell us:
At three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi,
Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me?” Some of the bystanders who heard it said, “Look, He is calling
Elijah.” One of them ran, soaked a sponge with wine, put it on a reed, and gave
it to Him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take Him
down.” Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed
His last.
Saint Luke
was not present at the Crucifixion and so does not record that incident in His
Gospel.
As for
Saint John, at the
Crucifixion he was standing nearby Mary, you might say together with her, under
the Cross. He was in no particular
danger, being young and somehow personally acceptable to the High Priest’s
officials and able to access his home or residence. Consequently he tells us his own immediate
experience of the Crucifixion as, standing beside Mary, he was enveloped in her
heart-rending suffering resulting from the violent abuse and vile mockery directed
at her beloved Son on the Cross by surrounding Temple officials and servants, Pharisees, and Scribes;
and of course John also took special care to mention Jesus’ words to Mary and
himself.
Peter on the other hand was a fully-grown and capable Galilean,
a well-known and, indeed, already ‘notorious’ disciple of Jesus, willing to
defend His Lord by cutting off an adversary’s ear! Therefore, Peter would have been standing at
a somewhat greater distance from the Cross, not so noticeable in the crowd of
on-lookers.
Peter had just denied Jesus – as His Lord had foretold –
three times, and he was now heart-broken at what he had done: and consequently,
he – Peter -- looking at Jesus from some distance, had eyes and ears only for
Him, and he told Mark only the very words – the ipsissima verba -- he could
gather Jesus was saying.
Jesus was, Peter tells us, reciting the 22nd Psalm,
which begins: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”,
when
one of the soldiers ran off to soak a sponge in some available wine, found
a reed on which to put the soaked sponge, and then hurried back to show it to
the others and finally offer it to the slowly agonizing … criminal ... as he
thought.
Jesus – a sublimely pious Jew, now at the moment of His death
-- would normally have been murmuring a prayer, a psalm, to Himself: murmuring
it, not merely thinking of it, but also not shouting it out. However, we are told – on Peter’s authority –
that Jesus cried out in a loud voice. Why was Jesus deliberately doing the
unexpected, crying out the opening words of the psalm in such an unexpectedly loud
voice? He obviously wanted it to be
known that He was – at that life/death moment -- wholeheartedly praying that
particular psalm.
Dear People of God, read the psalm for yourselves to
appreciate why it meant so much to Jesus at that time!!
Jesus knew most intimately all the Scriptures and, indeed, every
word: not one jot or tittle slipped His attention; nevertheless, it was the psalms that nourished His
humanity above all. The Law and the
Prophets spoke of God’s will for the Chosen People giving direct strength and
guidance for Jesus’ divine character, whereas the Psalms tend to relate the recourse
to God of His poor and needy, humble and faithful, servants, the ‘anawim’, suffering
from the sin ever-more prevalent and rampant among the worldly ambitious and faithless members
of the Chosen People. These psalms enabled
Jesus to take to, upon, Himself, the whole gamut of human suffering,
experienced, as it were, in His own Jewish flesh and blood, by that section of Israel
historically faithful to God’s covenant (Isaiah
63:16):
Though
Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not recognize us. You, O Lord, are our Father, Our Redeemer
from of old is Your name;
thus affording Jesus wonderful divinely-human comfort, inspiration
and strength for His own dying experience and expression of human love for God and
man at its most extreme.
Why did Jesus have to suffer so much?
Not
because His Father was punishing Him for our sins!!
He had to suffer because sin had been afforded entrance --
through Eve’s welcome and Adam’s acceptance -- into our humanity at its very
source. It could not, therefore, be just
forgotten or ignored; neither could it be one-sidedly (by God alone) pardoned
away, because sin is a reality, an instilled poison which, if not destroyed in men’s
hearts, will always be lurking and festering there, as Satan himself had been lurking
and festering in the minds and hearts of Jesus’ Jewish adversaries after his initial
defeat in the desert at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry until this very
moment.
Humanity in its original purity had to reject, overthrow, and destroy
Satan’s power in a direct and immediate contest under the leadership of One far
greater than Adam: One loving us divinely and therefore inexplicably,
unimaginably, in the eyes of Satan, who most foolishly despised Him because of
such love, and because of the perfect and humble authenticity of His humanity.
Jesus had begun His public ministry and merited His Father’s manifestation
of His loving approval by joining Himself to those penitents awaiting John’s
baptism in the Jordan; and now, at the very end of His life among us, He takes
upon Himself Israel’s and humanity’s most dreadful suffering:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken
Me?
Jesus wills to be with us – whoever we are and whatever we
may have made of ourselves and done with His gifts -- as Saviour, from
beginning to the very end. He most
deliberately and humbly lived and died among us and with us, under
circumstances not always subject to His human choice, indeed, as in our case,
often against His and our wishes, and subject only to patient acceptance and loving
prayer for God’s provident goodness and trustful love. Thus, He ultimately died with us and for us, that
we might be able to turn to Him for hope and redemption even in the very last
moment of our distressed lives. Let us
therefore take to our hearts and cherish most gratefully the final words of His
dying prayer shouted aloud that we might hear and learn to love (vv. 20; 31-32):
But you, LORD, do not stay far off; My
strength, come quickly to help Me.
And I will live for the Lord; My
descendants will serve You. The
generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people
yet unborn the deliverance You have brought.
