Happy Holy Week as we kick it off with the solemn celebration of Palm Sunday! Truly, how I long to be with you all in these coming sacred celebrations! I had certainly hoped that we would be back to “normal life” by the time we reached this holiest of weeks. But you and I are being called to joyfully surrender to God’s will. If considered in this light, what a gift He is giving us! For, our God is not a cruel God. By no means. Still, He is the King of kings and Lord of Lords. Therefore, what He wants goes. The good news, though, is that He never asks something of us which He has not already experienced, and which is not for our good.
This Palm Sunday we remember and celebrate the grand entrance of Jesus the King into Jerusalem. Psalm 118 prophesied that this entrance of the king would be followed by him taking his rightful throne after making a sacrifice in the temple. What did Jesus do? Yes, He took His throne and offered His sacrifice, but to the shock of everyone in the world, even to this day, that throne was an instrument of torture and death and the sacrifice was His very Self. This was God’s perfect sacrifice.
This scandal poses to each of us the most important question perhaps we can ever answer in this life: “Will we receive Jesus the King on His own terms or will we only accept Him on ours?” We might have preferred Him to come in on a large, strong war horse. We might have preferred Him to have come into Jerusalem and begin solving all the problems of the world. We might have preferred Him to work some grand miracle as He was hanging on the cross, striking down His enemies and coming down from the cross unharmed. Instead, He rode into that city of Jerusalem on a humble donkey, He spoke the truth with vigor but never with the intent of simply fixing the world’s problems but rather to save the world by transforming it, and He prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:24).
Jesus continues to “ride” into our lives every day. Will we receive Him without placing our own conditions on what He can and can’t do in our lives? I know this is difficult, but we have no reason to fear our Lord’s coming because all He desires is our salvation. As we enter this Holy Week, repent with me for all the ways which we haven’t yet fully received Christ. Instead of putting up roadblocks by placing conditions on how we expect/demand Jesus to act in our lives, let us strip ourselves of our garments of excessive self-love and pave a path with them for our Friend, Savior, and King. If we do this, we can expect that the Kingdom that Christ won for us will soon be ours. We will soon shout with jubilation and with palm branches of victory in hand, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Fr. Sandquist and I continue to daily offer the mass for you. Please, check the parish website and/or bulletin on how you can participate in these greatest celebrations of the Christian year.