THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Homily for Palm Sunday Mission Vespers

2005

So here we are. We’re at the beginning of Holy Week, the Great Week that allows us once again to enter into the mystery of Christ’s passion, death, burial, and resurrection. Throughout Lent we’ve been offered privileged opportunities to reflect on true discipleship, what it means to be a true follower of Christ, and to enter into an appropriate spirit of repentance. Paradoxically, our journey is almost over, and at the same time it has just begun.

There’s a way that perhaps we can know this story too well. We’ve heard it all before. Having been through the cycle of these services for years, having read through all the commentaries, and studying what the fathers and our best theologians have to teach us about Holy Week, can we really expect to gain new information? For most of us, probably not, so we risk going on automatic, attending services, but only half-listening to the texts and words, falling into a mindlessness that keeps this week from really affecting us, really changing us.  It becomes more a historical commemoration of something that happened long ago, rather than something alive at the marrow of our being.

But there’s another approach we can take, one that’s so much more fruitful. Accepting that we already “know” the story, we can go for depth instead of novelty. We can spiral down with these texts, going deeper and deeper into the mystery of this week, realizing that we can never exhaust the living experience of its mystery. Holy Week is not historical commemoration. Rather, it’s an opportunity to enter into the timelessness of the paschal mystery ourselves, letting its rhythm affect us in ever more profound ways.

Which brings us to today’s feast, and two central characters the Church offers for our meditation: the crowd and Mary. How might we spiral down? By nature crowds blow like the wind: they’re an anonymous mass, a throng, rudderless, swayed by transient emotions and clever propaganda. The crowd can never truly believe: that is possible only for an individual, for a true disciple. Liturgically, Palm Sunday always has a celebratory character to it, welcoming of the Messiah into our midst, but we shouldn’t get sucked into the hoopla, for it manifests a faith that’s only skin deep. It’s like fizz that’s released when you open a soda. It erupts, and then is gone. How quickly such enthusiasm grows stale. The crowd is swept up in the emotion of a potential political liberator who will do its bidding by removing the yoke of the Romans. But it misses the significance of the moment: Jesus arrives on a lowly ass, the very antithesis of a political liberator. Political liberators enter the political stage on big horses, with a sense of power and triumph. Jesus’ focus is on something totally different. And while the acclamation of the crowd looks impressive, we know that once it discovers the real meaning of the kingdom Jesus announces, and the fact that he won’t be used for their ends, their tune changes and they yell for his death. After all, it is a crowd.

By contrast, today we hear also of Mary, Lazarus’ sister, who reveals what the heart of a true disciple looks like. Her lavish act of love is made spontaneously, in gratitude for all that Jesus has done for her. She has no concern about being mocked or derided, only about expressing her love for Jesus, which she does in an extremely tender manner. Such love is not fizz, and we’re told, “the scent perfumed the whole house”, lingering, we can be sure, for a long while.

Two characters, two possible responses to Jesus; one is superficial and selfish, interested only in what Jesus can offer it. The other is intimate, concerned only about its response of love. Both examples address parts of ourselves that compete with each other particularly during this week. Which will we allow to be dominant in these coming days? May we use the services, the texts, the music, the times of silence as the means for becoming increasingly intimate with the depths of the paschal mystery.