Richard Bollman, S.J.

Palm Sunday 2010

Luke’s account about the Passion of Jesus

makes clear the kind of person Jesus is,

in his relationship with people even to the end of his life.

Of course there are the familiar details that all the Gospel writers include,

about the trials, the struggle with religious authority,

and the power of Rome to keep the peace.

But notice as well Jesus’ attention to the people around him

his care to help his disciples settle disputes even at the table that night,

and his words to the women of the city,

his heart for their suffering in the midst of his own.

This is the Gospel story where he forgives his executioners,

and the thief who is dying with him.

It’s as if throughout we’re called to be close to Jesus in his humanity,

but also in our own humanity, our restlessness and shortcomings.

We too push against each other for preferment,

we live with fear for the future, we are often blind to the harm we cause.

And even so Christ is raised up among us in love and consolation,

not condemning even Peter.

This important meaning of his death is powerful to me:

how Jesus is raised up among us in love and consolation.

It’s not a moment of guilt or blaming of Jews or Romans:

It is a time to feel just how we are linked as human beings,

with Jesus and with each other,

and how there is a power for our good released in his love,

the arms of embrace. This is a stabilizing place.

I remember a Philippine nun I met on retreat,

how she’d often pray for her country holding a small crucifix she carried,

just putting it in her hand. This was a time of struggle back home,

the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo had devastated many towns,

and holding the little cross gave her stability and contact.

I think of our cross here from Africa, what it might say to us

of a people often in crisis, and of our own fragility too.

It helps to hold on to things like this:

you may have a cross image of your own.

Looking on Jesus we see through as well to a larger world.

Civilians who die in our wars, soldiers wounded for life.

We hear again of the violation of children in our church institutions,

And we can feel our own inclinations toward blame and violence.

It’s hard to be human. We carry a lot.

So then Christ is raised up among us. Do not let yourself be closed off.

This is a way of coming home to the present moment of your life

and our shared lives.

This is what we call mindfulness, feeling your way to where you are,

not looking ahead in fear, or regretting the past.

But being here as we are, allowing it to be for the moment.

That seems to me to be the tone of Jesus’s testimony in the Gospel itself.

There’s an old Catholic prayer I looked up:

"Look down upon me, good and gentle Jesus
while before Your face I humbly kneel and,
with burning soul, pray and beseech You to
fix deep in my heart lively sentiments of faith, hope and charity; true contrition for my sins,
and willingness to give them up. While I contemplate,
with great love and tender pity, Your five most precious
wounds, pondering over them within me and calling to mind
the words which David, Your prophet, said of You, my Jesus:
"They have pierced My hands and My feet, they have numbered all My bones."
(Psalms 22:17-18). Amen.

This mindful presence is a deep place. It is redemption.

God’s close affection for us, and our hope in Jesus Christ.