By Fr. Joe McCloskey, SJ
“This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Matthew 21:11
Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear; and
I have not rebelled, have not turned back.
I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my
beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. Isaiah 50:4c-6
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form
of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled
himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians
2:6-1
After they had crucified him, they divided his garments
by casting lots; then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And they placed over his head the written
charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Matthew
27:35-37
Piety
A deep-seated piety of
love of the Lord is what life is about. It
is the goal of our journey to realize the perfect imaging forth in our life of
what our creation in the image and likeness of Christ is. When we finally discover who we are meant to
be in the service of the Lord, we will have realized the plan of God in our person-hood. The real self is who we are
in Christ. Our uniqueness as a person
will be how we image the Christ who does not create clones, but rather is the
uniqueness of who we are meant to be. We
wave the prayers and the good actions of our lives as the welcome we offer to
Christ, our truth, our way and our life.
Study
When we study Christ, we
are studying who we are meant to be in our day and age. Christ has come so that we might have the life
of the Father in who we are. Christ died
for our sinfulness so that we might have his life as the meaning of who we are.
There is no bypass of his cross. We are all called to go up to Jerusalem with
him. We are all given the opportunity to
die with him. We have eternal life in us
as we are raised up to his love forever. We have Christ as our destiny for all the good
thing we have done in our lives. Palm
Sunday with its Passion narrative gives us the connection between our happiness
to receive Christ in our lives and all the difficulties of following him
closely to his death on the cross.
Action
We welcome Christ to his
destiny in living to bring us salvation by entering into the Passion of Christ
with all our heart and soul. Once a year,
we are given the chance to relive with Christ the glorious meaning of God’s
love for us. God loved us so much that
he wanted to be one of us. We have the
chance to love God back in the ways we live out the crosses in our lives in the
name of Christ. Even as we rejoice to
offer up the crosses of our lives in his name, we fill up what is wanting to
the suffering of Christ’s body, the Church. We can rejoice in our sufferings in the name
of Christ in the realization that our crosses of life, carried in the name of
Christ, will be our claim to fame in heaven. Palm Sunday gives us the chance to glory in
our suffering in his name.
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