Dear Brothers and Sisters,
It is wonderful to think of how Jesus entered his passion starting with his entry into Jerusalem on this Palm Sunday. Try not to see it from an overly religious point of view about a God who sent his Son who suffers so much for me, what a poor thing. See it from the point of view of faith. The passion of Christ is a declaration of love that you will never be able to do, never. And no one could ever surpass this, no one could do anything like it. It is not some nice words or a few poems or a song, but it is a specific event, with concrete deeds that shows God’s love for you. If you want to know if God loves you, look at this gospel and you will realize that he loves you in a way that is not human. It is a crazy, crazy love. So hopefully we can live this day from a point of view of faith.
Christ has a battle in front of him and he gladly enters the cross out of love for you. The devil wants to cheat him and you, by telling you that God does not love you. However, Christ has the Father’s love in him. It says that he sweats blood. There is only one other time in the Bible that has thousands of words where that word ‘sweat’ is used. It is in Genesis where God tells Adam that he will earn his food by the sweat of his brow and Eve will be dominated by her husband. Is there a relation between these two events? Christ enters into his passion sweating drops of blood that pays for the punishment due to the sin of Adam and Eve.
He enters his suffering and temptation contently. He enters happily into his passion. This day is also called Passion Sunday, and what is passion? It is an intense love; it is a crazy love and that is why the color is red, which grabs our attention. The passion of Christ, the love of Christ attracts us. This is a day to love, not to mourn, not to be sad; it is the opposite of how many react. It is a day to rejoice, to make a procession. We have a God who loves us like crazy.
The figure of Barabbas always stand out to me in this gospel. The Jews appear very gross, like thugs and Pilate wanted to save Christ, but they kept shouting, “Crucify him, crucify him. Release Barabbas to us.” He was a murderer, a guerilla, a justice-maker, a vigilante. His name means the father’s son, daddy’s boy. And there is Jesus who is the Son of the Father. The gospel places before us a choice. Who do you want, a justice-maker, one who defends you or one that does not turn the other cheek, one who looked for revenge for the evil done to him and fought back. Who is our Messiah? They say, Barabbas.
The other one is a fool; he doesn’t say anything. He is silent and is of no use to me. He doesn’t help me. This is what we may be thinking inside of all of us. Inside of you there is a desire to do justice in your marriage every day. You want justice to be done and so you ask that Christ be killed when you resist evil that your spouse does to you. You respond with evil. You don’t want to forgive the other, the weaknesses of the kids or your colleague or your spouse. You judge constantly the boss.
I like this simple example of riding a bus to see if you chose Barabbas. There is a seat on the bus that is for a disabled person, a pregnant woman, for a child or a grandparent. And you get on the bus, and it is full, and the special seat is also filled but not by an old person or a disabled man but by a teenager who has his headphones on, and big ones. He does not listen to anyone around him, and he makes believe that he is sleeping so that he doesn’t have to get up. And what do you do? You make a big fuss to remove the kid, yes or no? You want to give that seat to the little old man who needs a seat, and you make a big scene on the bus. You are Barabbas!
You have to get rid of all the bad people in the world and get rid of evil. No, you are wrong because evil ends in the cross of Christ; evil ends in a Christian that takes on the injustice around him. All the pride of the world, your envy, your violence, your contempt of others. It ends in this gospel, in the cross of Christ. Because he does not return evil for evil, if you look at something impure, he doesn’t take out your eyes or cut off your hand. He does not cut off your tongue when you speak ill of the other. No, God does not answer your evil with evil.
He always gives us salvation and forgiveness. What does he say of those who are crucifying him? Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. This is his prayer to the Father on the cross. It is the most important moment. He always thinks well of you. He knows you were doing evil and he makes excuses for you. You did things that hurt yourself and your family. Things that were going to kill you and still Christ says, they did not know what they were doing. The gospel is wonderful. We don’t deserve to be treated this way.
I hope you realize that you are that donkey in this gospel because your mission is to carry Christ. A donkey needs to carry Christ into Jerusalem. A disciple will say that he has need of you, of a donkey. A donkey doesn’t do much good, but the Lord wants to enter Jerusalem, enter heaven, riding on you. All you have to do is be untied, and you can’t untie it yourself. It is a donkey that no one has ever ridden. So, they come to untie you and how do they do that? Preaching unties you and so do the sacraments. The catechists and the priests can also untie you and put you in front of Christ so Jesus can enter heaven on you.
This passion of the Lord is so important so that you may receive this love that unlocks you so that you can enter into the Passover, this heaven. The gospel prepares us for heaven, for the Passover. The events of Thursday and Friday will untie you from that profound lie the devil told you that God doesn’t love you. No one loves you. To be loved you need to be good and so you wear a mask. This is not the truth. We see in this gospel that this is not true. We can see it in the concrete deeds of Jesus Christ. God loves you the way you are and only God is able to do so.
God has loved you when you were evil, wicked and sinful, when you were a slave, when you made a disaster, when you were wrongfully accused, when they laugh at you, when you live injustices all day long, the injustice of poverty, of not being understood; this is where the Lord loves you. The gospel says this donkey has never been ridden before; it means you are not happy; you are not loved. The devil has used you to do evil. It has not been ridden by anyone nor by Christ. The donkey is for serving and if it has not been ridden it means it has not served, it has not loved.
May the Lord grant us the grace to enter humbly and simply this wonderful Passover. Let him do whatever he wants with us so we can enter this heavenly Jerusalem.