Make Jesus’ passion our passion

The inspired Word of God must be shared!

This Lenten season is not unlike most other Lents in the past: Sunday Mass, daily Mass, confessions, Stations of the Cross, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Scripture study groups, parish missions, and the embracing of the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  

Lent has provided us the opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ, as he battled the devil who was trying to tempt him in the desert. We then encountered Jesus Christ as we walked with him up the high mountain with Peter, James and John. In that moment of transfiguration, we too were given a glimpse of the resurrection beyond the cross. We then found ourselves at the well where Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman, and like her, we found our thirst quenched in the waters of new life. As a foreshadowing of the waters of baptism, we were given illumination as Jesus anointed the eyes of the blind man. The final sign that Jesus performed before his passion and death was the raising of Lazarus. It was this miracle and sign that would lead to his crucifixion and our being raised up with him on the cross.

We are asked on this Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, not to be merely bystanders, but rather to walk the way of the cross. We experience Jesus’ own passion as our passion by suffering and dying with Jesus on the cross, and to bury our old self and then be able to rise on Easter Sunday with the Lord in new life.  

Through these 40 days of Lent, we have become more profoundly holy through our accompanying Jesus as he journeyed to Calvary. We have greater awareness of Jesus’ passion and death, through our examination of conscience, confession and the practice of the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. We are now ready to enter Holy Week.

The Liturgy and Scriptures for this Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, bring us to the heights of joy as the crowd shouts, “Hosanna in the Highest!” And then to the depths of despair as the crowd then shouts, “Crucify him!” Just as there can be no passion without Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, there can be no Holy Week without the suffering of the cross, and the understanding that the suffering of Jesus allows us to unite our own sufferings to his.

The First Reading from Isaiah 50:4-7, is the third of four Suffering Servant Songs from the Book of Prophet Isaiah. The servant who is sent by God will vicariously suffer for the sins of the people of Israel. The Suffering Servant will take upon himself the suffering of not only Israel but the entire world. “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.” We are the weary who are roused this Holy Week to encounter the suffering of our savior. The Suffering Servant is the innocent victim who dies for our sins.

This suffering does not end with death, but rather we are brought to new life. St. Paul tells us that in the Second Reading from the letter to the Philippians (Phil. 2:6-11): “He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God exalted him and bestowed on him the name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” The passion and death of Jesus lead to his glory in the resurrection.

The Passion of the Lord, from the Gospel of Matthew 27:11-54 asks us to walk the way of the cross and by walking the path that Jesus walked. We come to the realization with each liturgy of Holy Week, that we are called to identify with Jesus’ passion. We are to make Jesus’ passion our passion. 

Jesus was betrayed by a friend. Have we ever known a friend’s betrayal? Jesus was falsely arrested and unjustly judged. Have we ever been falsely accused and unjustly judged by others? Jesus is scourged, tried and condemned. Have we been humiliated and had judgement unjustly passed on us? Jesus was denied and abandoned by his friends and faces his passion alone. Have we felt abandoned, alone and isolated from others? This is the passion of the Lord: betrayal, false accusations, injustice and abandonment.

As the cries from the response from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” echo and reverberate throughout the world this Palm Sunday, let us remember, that even though Jesus was abandoned on the cross, he never abandons us when we are carrying our own crosses.