Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, Year A
Today’s celebration of Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, clearly displays, makes visible and shows us what our christian life looks like, as disciples of Christ. The gospel reading we heard at the beginning of Mass from Matthew Chapter 21, verses 1 to 11 after the blessings of the palms, emphasizes our firmness of faith in God and our commitment to be His disciples. The triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem also reminds us of our loyalty to God and the call to persevere in our lives as children of God. We like the Jews have all through our lives shown this firmness of faith in God and our commitment as His disciples by crying out and proclaiming, “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest.” But later in our lives like the Jews, our fickleness surfaces and we reject Jesus accusing Him of many evil things, then saying, “He deserves to die;…let Him be crucified;…His blood be upon us and upon our children.” Where has our firmness of faith in God, and our commitment or dedication to Him as His disciples gone? The passion story we heard from the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew Chapter 26, verse 14 to chapter 27, verse 66, reminds us take a moment and think about how we have rejected God, abandoned Him and denied Him in our lives. It calls us to true repentance, that is, to be truly and sincerely sorry for our sins and to make amends for them. Look at the actions of betrayal by Peter and Judas in their fidelity to Jesus. Both of them showed remorse and repentance for their actions. Peter never stopped at those acts of remorse and repentance, he went further to change his life and become the rock upon which the Catholic Church was built. Judas on the other hand, showed remorse and repentance for his actions, but lost hope that God would not forgive him, and hung himself in shame, despair and bitterness. Judas never gave himself the chance to change for good like Peter, who reunited himself to Jesus and changed his life. My brothers and sisters in Christ, as we meditate on today’s celebration, Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, never forget that Jesus’s passion and death was an act of love. Hence, let us reciprocate our love for God by sincerely going back to Him in sorrow, by remorsefully acknowledging our sins, by asking God for pardon through the sacrament of Confession, and by truly making amends and changing our lives like Peter did.
