Palm Sunday 2025: Exploring the Depths of Jesus' Sacrifice
Readings for Mass and Virtual Homily, April 13, 2025, Palm Sunday; Two Weeks Off; Beginning to Feel it -- the Class of 2025 is Getting Ready to Leave
Readings for Mass this Sunday:
Processional Gospel: Luke 19:28-40
Isaiah 50:4-7
Psalm 22:8-9, 17-20
Philippians 2:6-11
Luke 22:14-23:56
Dear Friends and Family,
This Sunday's readings are, of course, all related to the Passion.
The Processional Gospel (the Gospel passage read before the start of Mass) is Luke's account of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the event we commemorate this Sunday. All four Gospels attest to the rock-star-like reception Jesus received, John specifically tying it to the raising of Lazarus, which had likely happened just days, maybe a week or two, earlier (John 12:9-11). In any event, the readings within the Mass proper all focus on the suffering of Jesus.
Isaiah starts with the observation that "The Lord has given me a well-trained tongue...I have not rebelled, I have not turned back" (vss. 4-5). Jesus' silence in his Passion was one of his weapons, as was his obedience. To defeat the powers of Hell, Jesus employed weapons about which they knew little.
"I gave my back to those who beat me," Isaiah continues, "my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting" (vs. 6). These are direct predictions, clearly, of the suffering, both physical and emotional, of Jesus on that first Good Friday. "The Lord God is my help," the passage goes on, "therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing I shall not be put to shame" (vs. 7). Luke quotes this passage (Luke 9:51), describing Jesus, as he makes his way to Jerusalem, resolute in his determination to fulfill his mission.
Jesus quotes Psalm 22 from the cross. "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (vs. 1). Psalm 22 IS the crucifixion reported from the inside, so to speak, as though the psalmist were experiencing it himself. "All who see me mock me," the psalmist writes. "They curl their lips and jeer...'He relied on the Lord, let him deliver him" (vss. 8-9). In striking and graphic terms, the psalmist continues, "They have pierced my hands and my feet; I can count all my bones" (vss. 17-18). With pin-point prophetic accuracy, the psalmist declares, "They divide my garments among them; for my vesture they cast lots" (vs. 19).
Psalm 22 does "turn around," of course. The last third of the psalm is a paean of joy and thanksgiving to God; after having given this astonishingly accurate account of the crucifixion, the psalmist foresees the joy of the Resurrection. The final verses in today's passage reflect this bright reality.
The second reading is a testament to high Christology (that is, reminding us that Jesus is God) while at the same time reminding us that Jesus is also fully human. He "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave...becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (vss. 7-8).
The first reading expresses the Messiah's certainty that he will not be put to shame; the psalm emphasizes the great joy which follows the crucifixion; the second reading likewise informs us that, because of Jesus' sacrifice, "God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend...and every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord" (vss. 9-11). All three readings, in other words, underscore the basic Christian understanding, the dynamic that resurrection follows crucifixion, that after the desert comes the promised land. All three encourage us to hold on in hope, even in the darkest moments.
Luke's Passion Narrative, as is the case with those of the other three Gospels, speaks eloquently for itself. It starts with the Last Supper and proceeds through to Jesus' death. Luke alone gives us the details of Jesus' sweat of blood in the garden (22:44), of Herod attempting to interrogate Jesus (23:6-12), of the weeping women of Jerusalem (23:27-31), the Good Thief (23:39-43) and Jesus' prayer for his executioners, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" (23:34).
I have, as most of you are aware, never tried to preach on Palm Sunday; never tried to preach on Good Friday. The Passion narratives are not going to be "deepened" or "made relevant" or "improved" by anything any preacher might try to add.
But while I feel I can add nothing to the accounts of the Lord's suffering, I can maybe provide something of value in offering a limited analysis of why God chose to save us in this way. Because theologians argue that God might have saved us with a word of forgiveness in the Garden of Eden: "Hey, the serpent was smarter than you. You should not have listened to him. Don't do it again. Too late to get your innocence back, but I can forgive the offense and move you forward regardless."
God did not so choose to save us. There may be many reasons for this fact; here are three I think worthy of our reflection.
One, Jesus shows us in "becoming sin for us" (to quote St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:21) how ugly sin is; how deeply it mars the divine image in us. The wounds and lacerations of Jesus' body, the disfigurement of his face (swollen and bruised and bloodied) -- these mirror for us the effect of sin on our souls. The wounds of Jesus might be understood as a living metaphor of how sin wounds us.
Two, in entering into the fearful mysteries of human suffering and death, God Himself (that is, the God-Man) is able to relate to our sufferings. God is not remote or removed from human suffering, whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual. God knows suffering, you might say, from deep personal experience of it; the experience of it suffered by the God-Man. When we suffer, we can turn to Jesus, knowing he knows what we are going through.
Related to the above, God also knows what death is, having entered into it himself. This is really pretty mind-blowing, when we stop and think about it. Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, God from God, Light from Light, the One through whom all things were made...the Author of life itself dies a human death and so enters the place of the dead and...liberates everyone there, and liberates all of us, as well. Death, in the Christian understanding, is no longer a place of shadowy forgetfulness, the place the Jews called Sheol and the Greeks called Hades. Death is transformed, in and through Christ, into the shining portal to eternity that the Church describes (and which has been attested to, anecdotally, by tens of thousands of human beings who have had the near-death experience).
Three, and this is a chief consideration; this one, I think, nails it. In deciding to save humanity through the crucifixion, we rightly ask ourselves, what more could God have done, to show us how much we are loved? What more could God have given? What more could Jesus, a human being, have done, to demonstrate God's love for us? Jesus literally gave all he had; his body, his blood, his last breath for us. He spared himself nothing. On top of that, right at the end he gave us something priceless, in the maternal love of his mother. There was nothing he had, including his mother's love, that Jesus withheld from us. In his self-sacrifice, he gave everything. Everything for us.
Because he wants us to understand that God's love for us is boundless.
Just some insights running alongside the powerful descriptions in today's readings of the suffering of our Savior.
With Palm Sunday weekend and the start of Holy Week, of course, we have reached Easter break, at Bishop O'Dowd. I am a little at sea with how rapidly the middle third of the semester shot by. From President's Day to this weekend it has been eight weeks, but I seem almost not to have noticed the time; it has really gone quickly. All those retreats, of course, no doubt contributed to things moving at lightning speed.
I am normally way up, emotionally, by this time of the academic year because regardless of the "grade" I may be giving myself for the year, in fact, by Easter break, we are moving to a successful close of the academic year. I am looking forward to the break and I am looking forward to the last few weeks of the spring semester, but...the Class of 2025 are now short-timers at O'Dowd, and that fact leaves me with mixed emotions..
I have joked with colleagues and friends and indeed with the seniors themselves that it is a good thing I am going on sabbatical the rest of this year, as returning to campus in August absent the Class of 2025 would be a sad business for me. In fact, the sabbatical is only happening this summer and fall because I postponed it, in order not to miss any part of the senior year of the Class of 2025...
I'll make the most of my time with the seniors, after the break. And then...well, of course, I really DO want them to move on; we all do. We have done, my colleagues and I, our best for them, we have met our deep responsibilities to prepare them for their own future -- for about 98% of them, that means college, of course. They've mostly found out, now, where they got in and are making decisions about next year; it is exciting to think about how their young lives will open up and out to the wider world, in just a few months.
All the same, I will miss them, and think of them often and fondly; with real gratitude for having met them.
Gonna close this one. Hope your Lent is wrapping up well. Take good care, God bless and here's to a serene, deep and -- well, holy -- Holy Week!
El Padre