Meditation for the Sixth Sunday of Lent: Palm Sunday (John 12:1-18)

Meditation for the Sixth Sunday of Lent: Palm Sunday
John 12:1-18
Palm Sunday is the gateway to Holy Week, which begins with joy (Palm Sunday) and ends with joy (the Resurrection).
“Hosanna” (save us)! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel! This is the cry that will fill this day, and which we heard in the Gospel.
It echoes the words of the Apostle Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice… And the God of peace will be with you.”
This is the King who is coming: he is the King of Israel, the King of peace, “Melchizedek”, that is, the king of righteousness.
How beautiful our liturgy is, placing these words within our lives!
In a moment we will process with the palms and enter the church, expressing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, and cry out with the disciples: Hosanna…
What will we carry in our hearts? Who is this King who is coming?
By nature, and since the dawn of history, man has sought peace and seen in it his happiness and well-being.
But he often chooses the wrong roads, thinking they will take him there.
How often man has fallen into war in search of peace!
For the sake of peace, many have resorted to tyranny;
in search of peace, others have rushed to amass money;
in the name of peace, some have spared no means and not hesitated to take any wrong road.
A thoughtful reading of human history shows, on the one hand, man’s deep longing for peace;
but it also shows the failure of most of the roads he has taken and most of the solutions he has put forward.
The Jews who cried out “Save us, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” lived through their long and tormented history thirsting for peace.
They longed for it, but their dreams saw it in independence – which often meant nothing less than tyranny –
and they expected it in liberation, even if at times it meant enslaving others.
They sought peace in dreams of glory and power, in a philosophy of domination and desires for supremacy, forgetting the prophecy of Zechariah:
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Behold, your king is coming to you, riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
After three years of teaching and works, the Lord Jesus came to the gates of Jerusalem in an atmosphere of harsh confrontation,
and entered it as a conqueror after raising Lazarus.
He had captured people’s hearts by his power, even over death.
The people saw in him the object of their dreams, and he entered Jerusalem as King of Israel,
but in a strange way: on the foal of a donkey.
By this triumphant entry, and in this way, Jesus wants to announce the nature of his Kingdom.
It is the Kingdom of righteousness and true peace.
This is what today’s Epistle stresses:
“Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things… and the God of peace will be with you.”
These are the weapons of the peace we seek to achieve.
The Lord Jesus, today’s conqueror, is founding this kingdom.
These are the roads of peace, and this is what the Palm Sunday procession means.
This procession is the Christians’ peaceful “march”, in which they raise their slogans, goals and weapons,
namely the palm branches, which the whole tradition interprets as symbols of the virtues, as the blessed hymns say.
In this way the Lord Jesus conquered Jerusalem and inaugurated this Kingdom of peace, leaving us Christians to complete it and bring it about over the whole face of the earth.
Christ entered Jerusalem as king once, so that we may make him king over the whole world, for ever.
The Church alone, through the righteousness she teaches, lives and proclaims, is the centre of peace on earth among the nations – indeed its sign and its strength.
The Kingdom of this King is the Church, which builds righteousness and tears down the pillars of evil;
which binds people together in love, doing away with all differences.
She truly gathers, unlike so many groupings that gather in order to divide;
she reconciles people and makes them compete only in righteousness.
The Palm Sunday procession is a “march”, and this is its meaning:
we proclaim to ourselves and to others that we are founding a kingdom
in which strength is love,
greatness is humility,
glory is service,
and the Master is the one who comes on the foal of a donkey.
This is the risk of faith, and faith without risk is empty.
Our faith is that, like our Master, we will remain believers;
that injustice is weak because it passes away,
but sacrifice, even if it begins with death, is a seed that will rise into ears of victory.
Everything that is weak in people’s eyes is, in our faith, the strongest weapon.
Many ruled people by power and conquered the world by force; they came and they went.
Our Lord alone was, and because he fought with love, he is and he will come.
They persecute us with injustice; we respond with forgiveness;
they dominate with glory; we answer with humility;
for injustice dies, and forgiveness rises.
The one is frail; the other is alive and does not die.
So we lift up your Cross, O Lord, and say:
Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the King of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord!
Amen.
Fr. Gerard Abi Saab