Dear Friends,
Our king rides on a donkey. It is one of the hundreds of predictions of the Messiah, many centuries before Jesus Christ. Today he took these words to himself. Imagine a king on a donkey, not on a horse, no one would believe it. It would have been considered ridiculous.
The gospel says one thing to us brothers: I love you. I love you passionately, I love you like crazy. I have this burning desire to eat the Passover with you, to offer myself to you so that you may be with me always. Every word of the gospel is like a caress of love no matter what we have done.
In the movie The Passion of the Christ, Pilate after the scourging of Christ presents him to the crowd and says: Behold the man. When Jesus became man, he became one like us, truly a man who truly suffered for you and for me. In marriage the two shall become one flesh and so they have to learn how to bend to one another. There are like two pieces of a puzzle that that should fit together. But often they don’t fit so at least one of them has to have a little humility.
The burning bush is a sign of God’s love. It burns and burns and is not consumed. It burns all day, every day. The love God has for us cannot be put out, not by our sins, not by anything that we do. It’s an incalculable love that nowhere can be found.
So, who are you in the gospel? Are you Judas, or Peter, or one of the serving girls, or are you Barabbas? He was a freedom fighter, a justice maker. He was full of rage and wanted to overthrow the Romans and maybe at times inside we’re like this. Pilate has Barabbas on one side and Christ on the other. And he asks, who should I set free, who do you choose?
Jesus in front of injustice what does he do? He’s quiet. He is like a lamb. He doesn’t resist evil. You could say he looks foolish, totally beaten. Most people would say that they choose Christ. But if your husband comes home and doesn’t say a word to you only complains; he doesn’t help with anything in the house. He is on this phone the whole time, or reading the paper; how do you react? If you were like Christ you would warm up his dinner, bring him this favorite beer, the slippers that he likes, etc. Is that what you do? Or do you give him the silent treatment for three days?
How about when the husband comes home and the house is a mess, the kids haven’t eaten dinner or done their homework, what does the husband do? If he’s like Christ he prepares dinner, helps the kids with their homework, gives them a bath, puts them to bed, etc. He chooses Christ.
I speak of husband and wife but the same happens in any relationship. Years ago, one of the ladies in the parish heard this catechesis and said I was Barabbas today, four times, twice with my kids, once in the office, once on the road. She realized how often she responded with violence and not like Christ.
Our temptation may be to say, but if I continue this way, I’m just going to grow a pack of thieves, or a bunch of lazy persons. But really the opposite is true. If you act like Christ your family will become more Christian, society will become more Christian. When you show the love of Christ, people change. When will all the evil in the world stop? It stops at the cross of Christ. He takes it all on himself. Everything that’s happening in Ukraine and in China and in North Korea, Christ takes all that evil upon himself.
Jesus gives directions to the apostles to get ready for the Passover. He says, you will find a donkey that is tied up. Tell the owner that the master has needed it. The donkey is needed to carry Christ to others, to you and to me. We also have to be untied, we are tied up with so many things and we need to be untied so that we can bring Christ to others. Our Lord is passing by these days and wants to take us out of our slavery and bring us to the Resurrection. Let us enter this Holy Week with real desires to be with the Lord, to suffer with him, and to rise with him.