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Friday 26 March 2021

Palm Sunday Year B 2021

 

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.