On Palm Sunday the full gospel reading for Year C is: Luke 22:14-23:56. Given the extreme length of this reading we will use Luke 19: 28-40 (the procession of palms) to fit within the allotted time for our meeting today.

The Entry into Jerusalem

Luke 19: 28-40

After he had said this, he proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem. As he drew near to Bethpage and Bethany at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples. He said, “Go into the village opposite you, and as you enter it you will find a colt tethered on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. And if anyone should ask you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you will answer, ‘The Master has need of it.” So those who had been sent went off and found everything just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying this colt?” They answered, “The Master has need of it.” So they brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks over the colt, and helped Jesus to mount. As he rode along, the people were spreading their cloaks on the road and now as he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to praise God aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds they had seen. They proclaimed: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He said in reply, “I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!”

Discussion Questions:

1. Jesus’ symbolic entry into Jerusalem is one of acceptance, humility, and peace. How does His vulnerability and surrender feel for you as an image of God?
2. We are dust, and to dust we will return. Where do you notice growth in your acceptance of surrender and vulnerability in life, and in your relationship with God?
3. When have you been abandoned or disappointed in an hour of need? Were you able to forgive the person?
4. How do the “crosses” you bear at this time in your life help you relate or connect more to Jesus and His suffering?
5. “Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and your children.” How do these words of Jesus draw your attentiveness to the pain and suffering of the Body of Christ around you today?

Biblical Context

Luke 19: 28-40
Sr. Mary M. McGlone CSJ

Last week, we met a crowd infected with contagious fury and ready to stone a woman for adultery. This week’s crowd is enthralled with the spectacle of Jesus’ entry into the Holy City. This crowd’s praise might be as mindless as the fury of the former. In fact, Luke’s account of the Passion gives us a crowd for almost every emotion. We have this jubilant crowd who praised Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, the tumultuous crowd who joined the religious leaders three times in demanding Jesus’ crucifixion, and a mournful crowd of women who lamented his fate as he walked the way of the cross.

Jesus responded differently to the three crowds. When the Pharisees told him to rebuke the crowds accompanying him into Jerusalem, he defended the people singing his praises by saying, “If they keep silent, the stones will cry out!” For those who had ears to hear, that reply echoed the song of the three martyrs, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who sang from their executioners’ furnace: “Mountains and hills bless the Lord, praise and exalt him forever” (Daniel 3:75).

Jesus made no reply whatsoever to the crowds who called for his execution. The women were the only group to whom he spoke directly. In anticipation of his prayer for forgiveness for his persecutors, he told them not to weep for him, but for themselves and the fate of the people who remained closed to his message. By doing this, Jesus invited them to lament what he lamented, the tragedy incurred by the people who rejected him. He wanted the women in solidarity with him to lament with him rather than for him.

As we watch the people who were part of the story of Jesus’ passion, we might wonder what we should learn from them. The disciples at the supper mightily missed the point of Jesus’ prayer over bread and wine. Just after he blessed their meal as a sacrament of his self-giving, they got involved in a jealous argument over status. That quarrel was simply the insiders’ petty imitation of the religious leaders who wanted to do away with Jesus because they perceived him as a rival to their power and position.

Peter’s greatest act of discipleship came not in his promises, but his tears. His contrite admission of failure was the opening to grace that Jesus had promised when he said, “I have prayed for you that … once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.”

In Luke’s Gospel, the only two who seemed to grasp and appreciate the meaning of the events of his passion were strangers. The first of them was one of Jesus’ fellow victims, the dying criminal who believed that even in his dying, Jesus was indeed coming into his kingdom. The other was the centurion who, upon seeing how Jesus died, glorified God and said, “Surely this man was righteous.” These declarations of faith, one presumably by a Jew adjudicated as a sinner, the other by a gentile, were a sign of Jesus’ fulfillment of his mission. More than the disciples, more than even the women, these two lead us toward understanding the saving effects of Jesus death.

 The Things that Make for Peace

Reflection
Fr. Michael K. Marsh

This is the familiar Palm Sunday story about Jesus sending his disciples into the village to retrieve a colt for him to ride to Jerusalem. As he rides along people are “spreading their cloaks on the road” and “the whole multitude of the disciples” are praising God “for all the deeds of power they had seen.” We hear some version of that every year. It’s the usual Palm Sunday story. But here’s what strikes me: We call it Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem but the reading ends before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem. We don’t hear anything about his entry into Jerusalem. And I think we need to.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is an entry with tears, lament, and a judgment. Jesus enters Jerusalem weeping because Jerusalem has not recognized “on this day the things that make for peace.” And, I think that same thing could be said about each of us and our world today. We are Jerusalem. Look at your life today. Look at what is happening in the world today. I don’t think there is a person or place today not in need of peace. How does that happen to us? How did it happen to Jerusalem? How do we lose our peace? And what are “the things that make for peace”? I think Jesus demonstrates the answer to these questions throughout Holy Week. I think everything that will happen throughout this week, reveals “the things that make for peace.”

Watch Jesus throughout this week. Listen to what he says. He never defends himself. He never tries to justify himself or offer excuses. He doesn’t try to negotiate or plea bargain a better deal. He doesn’t express any sense of entitlement or put himself above others. He neither explains himself nor apologizes. And he does not turn back.

He doesn’t do any of those things because he has no need to justify, explain, excuse, or defend himself. Jesus never betrays himself. All through his life and the coming week he remains true to himself. He is at peace with himself, and that lets him be at peace with others and the circumstances he is facing.

And that’s true for you and me as well. When I refuse to betray myself, when I remain true to myself and what my life is asking of me, I have no need to justify myself. I’m at peace with myself, and I can be at peace with you and whatever it is I have to deal with. But when I begin justifying myself, making excuses, or becoming defensive it’s usually because I’ve betrayed myself. I’ve turned away from who I am and there is no peace in my life. I am at war with myself and chances are I will be at war with someone else. And it won’t be because they started it. That war started with my self-betrayal.

I think self-betrayal is why in this week’s second gospel reading (Luke 23:1-49) Jesus tells the Daughters of Jerusalem, “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children”. Jerusalem has betrayed itself. It’s “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it”. It has made God’s house of prayer into a den of robbers. It doesn’t recognize the time of its visitation from God. It is living in self-betrayal.

Look for the places in your life today where you feel the need to justify, defend, explain, or excuse yourself, and you’ll probably find self-betrayal and an absence of peace. In what ways is your heart at war with yourself or another? What is the conflict that keeps you awake at night, haunts your dreams, and reminds you that peace is lacking?

I am not asking about only the self-betrayal that results in us doing something we call bad or wrong. I’m also asking about the self-betrayal of denying our own holiness and goodness; the times we diminish ourselves; the ways we turn away from our passions, gifts, or longings; the times we give up on ourselves, our dreams, or hopes; the ways in which settle for being and living less than who we really want to be.

I’ve begun lately to think about self-betrayal as our original sin. It’s a deep self-wounding in need of healing. What if Holy Week is the start of that healing? What if Holy Week is the beginning of getting ourselves back and healing the betrayals of our lives?

Jesus begins Holy Week looking at and weeping for our self-betrayals. What are the self-betrayals that have robbed you of peace? What are the self-betrayals that have brought you to tears?

Let’s not leave our tears behind this week. Let’s start this week naming the tears of our betrayals and hurts. Let’s offer them each day this week. They know the way. They are the original water of baptism. Every time we let our tears flow – whether they flow down our cheeks, flow in our memories, or flow through our prayers – every time we let them flow, we return to the waters of our baptism; the waters that cleanse, renew, and give life.

Those tears just might be the only thing that can cleanse the lens of our heart enough to see “the things that make for peace.”

Reflection excerpt from: Interrupting the Silence: by Fr. Michael K. Marsh. www.interruptingthesilence,com Used with permission.