Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
from the womb of my whale, ALS
Our cross is the pulpit of the Word
We enter the Great Week!
Year B – Palm Sunday and the Lord’s Passion
Mark 11:1-10 (blessing of palms)
Mark 14:1-15,47 (passion of the Lord)
With Palm Sunday and the Lord’s Passion we begin the Holy Week, also called the Great Week. After the forty days of preparation, we are about to celebrate the mystery of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus (Easter Triduum). A tremendous and ineffable mystery, dark and luminous, before which we remain astonished, stunned and incredulous: “Who would have believed our revelation?” (Isaiah 53:1). The Church and her children live this week as a spiritual retreat, in intimate communion with their Lord.
This Sunday has two faces, two distinct parts. The first: the rite of palms, followed by the procession, characterised by joy and enthusiasm. The second: the Eucharist, with the proclamation of the passion, marked by sadness, failure and death.
A) Palm Sunday and the law of the donkey
From the gospel of the blessing of the palms (Mark 11:1-10) I would like to draw attention to two of the protagonists: the crowd and the donkey. First of all, the crowd that accompanies Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem, acclaiming him as the Messiah. We generally identify this crowd, presumably consisting mainly of Galileans, with the crowd that days later will demand Jesus’ crucifixion. This identification seems rather improbable and somewhat unfair. Jerusalem was a city with several tens of thousands of inhabitants and, at Easter, doubled its population with the arrival of pilgrims. This crowd of Galileans, moreover considered to be exalted, was bound to end up dispersing, perhaps even disappointed in their messianic expectations of Jesus. The crowd that demanded Jesus’ death, on the other hand, was stirred up by the city’s religious authorities and certainly made up of Jewish citizens. The risk for the disciple of Jesus is to allow oneself to be conditioned by the common way of thinking and to sin of cowardice in fearing to declare oneself a follower of Jesus!
The messianic nature of Jesus requires a profound change of mentality. This is why Jesus goes back to a forgotten prophecy, which presents a humble and meek messiah who prefers the donkey, a beast of burden (carrying the weight of others) to the horse: “Behold, to you comes your king, meek, seated on a donkey and on a colt, the son of a beast of burden” (Zechariah 9:9). Jesus is the Messiah who bears our burdens on the cross: “He has borne our sufferings, he has taken upon himself our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Consequently, the Christian must also do the same: “Bear one another’s burdens: thus you will fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). “For the whole law of Christ is the law of the donkey” (Silvano Fausti).
“When Christianity, the Church, each one of us, knowing that the only mode of existence is to live like the donkey, begins to wink at the ‘world’, the kings and the powerful of the earth, desiring to live and be like them through power, wealth and success, then a kind of tragic hybridisation will take place. We, made to live like donkeys, will join the horse, the symbol of worldly power, and the result will be to find ourselves like mules, stupid but above all sterile animals.” (Paolo Scquizzato).
B) The sacredness of the passion narrative
The passion narrative is the oldest, most developed and most sacred part of the gospels. It is believed that this writing, taken up in Mark’s gospel, took place a few years after Jesus’ death in the year 30, possibly before the year 36, when Caiaphas finished as high priest, since his name is not mentioned in Mark’s account, which suggests that Caiaphas was still in office. This account circulated in the communities and was presumably read in the Eucharistic celebration.
The apostles were the ‘witnesses of the resurrection’. Why, then, did the Christians of the first generation attach so much importance to the memory of the passion? Because they saw that the danger of ignoring the cross of Christ was very great and this would have been a betrayal of the Christian message. This danger is still a great temptation for not a few Christians. The ‘kerygma’, that is, the essential Christian preaching, is a triptych that indissolubly unites the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord!
C) Proposals for internalising the passion narrative
– One way of approaching the long story could be to fix our attention on each character who intervenes in this drama and ask ourselves in whom we see ourselves mirrored. Each of us has our part in this drama. Each person who intervenes plays a role in which Scripture is fulfilled. Which word is fulfilled in me?
– A second way could be to pause on some characteristic elements of Mark’s account. I will mention five of them.
1) Jesus’ anguish. A disconcerting note in the account is the fear and anguish of Jesus: “He began to feel fear and anguish. He said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful unto death’. Jesus is not a superhero, but one of us: he loves life and fears death!
2) Loneliness. Jesus appears abandoned by everyone, even by his closest friends and even by his Father: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Loneliness is part of the Christian’s experience. It is the time of trial and purification of faith!
3) Abba! In this hour of trial Jesus prays with extreme confidence: “Abba! Father! All things are possible to you: take this cup away from me! But not what I want, but what you want”. “Abba” is the child’s affectionate name for his father: Daddy. This is the only time in all the gospels that we find this word and, coincidentally, at the most tragic moment of his life!
4) Silence. We are astonished by Jesus’ silence, emphasised several times. This silence questions us. We tend to react at all costs, unable to endure humiliation!
5) The Roman centurion’s profession of faith. How strange! Jesus is not recognised as the Son of God in the work of miracles, but by the way he suffered and died on the cross! It is a pagan the first person in Mark’s gospel who makes the profession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God, towards which Mark wanted to lead his readers!
Holy entry into Holy Week!
Fr. Manuel João Pereira Correia mccj
Verona, 21 March 2024
For the complete reflection, see: https://comboni2000.org/2024/03/21/la-mia-riflessione-domenicale-entriamo-nella-grande-settimana/
