Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, Year B
As we begin the Holy Week today, we celebrate Palm Sunday which highlights the highest point of God’s love for us. Today’s celebration of Palm Sunday though it started by recalling the entry of our Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem tells us of the story of the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Palm Sunday reminds us of Jesus’s suffering and death on the cross for us. His passion and death shows us how much love He has for us and how much He cares for us. Today’s celebration also reminds us that sufferings, pain and crosses will come our way as God’s children and Christ’s disciples because of the gospel. Hence, the Palm Sunday celebration urges us to follow the example of Jesus which was non violent and non retaliatory, as we heard today in the gospel reading, when we go through such challenging times or situations or circumstances in our lives.
The Palm Sunday celebration calls us to listen deeply, understand patiently, dialogue openly, negotiate fairly and reach an understanding calmly and peacefully. The Palm Sunday celebration also calls us to pay attention to the sufferings and challenges faced by others like Prophet Isaiah tells us in the first reading. So why do we celebrate such memory of pain, sorrow and grief? We celebrate it to remind ourselves of how we constantly reject Jesus with our lives of sin. We celebrate it to remind ourselves of how cold we are to Him, how we betray Him, jeer at Him, mock Him, condemn Him, and crucify Him with our lives of sin. We also celebrate it so as to be aware of and to prepare ourselves to face the challenges, suffering and crosses that will come our way as disciples of Christ. The example of Jesus in today’s gospel reading teaches us how to endure our sufferings as God’s children, and how to carry our crosses willingly with humility, patience and faith. It also educates us to recognize and pay attention to the sufferings and struggles of others because we all have crosses to bear and sufferings to undergo, so that we all can grow in our love for God and our neighbors and be assured of our heavenly reward.
So my brothers and sisters, since today’s Palm Sunday celebration calls us to pledge our allegiance and loyalty to God who loves us through penance, mortification, fasting, charity and prayers, let us do so today with Humility, Patience and firmness of faith in Him as we participate in His passion and death this Holy Week. Amen
