PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD' S PASSION (C)

Reading: Luke 19:28-40

There are people who oppose the honoring of Jesus Christ. There are people who would like the name of Jesus erased from the pages of history and from all memory. The Pharisees were like that. When his disciples and the crowd of people waving their palms and cheering him entered Jerusalem, the Pharisees said, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” But Jesus replied, “If they were to keep silence, I tell you the very stones would cry out.”

During nearly seventy-five years many communist regimes tried to do away with God and Christ. We are witnesses of the results of their efforts. They failed. But some people never seem to give up. Some keep trying to do away with God and Christ from our society. They will not be successful, though - no more successful than the Pharisees and their friends who instigated and engineered the crucifixion of Christ. No number of human beings, not even all the devils in hell can do away with God and Christ. As Jesus said, “The very stones will cry out” his name and worship him.

God is a part of us. Or we are a part of him - whichever you prefer. At the very beginning of human creation we were made in God’s image and likeness. Even though that image was tarnished and disfigured by sin, even though we still sin and mar its beauty, the goodness of Jesus in human nature always keeps reaching out towards its Father. When the Son of God joined himself to our humanity the efforts of anybody or anything to break that unity was squelched and defeated forever. No one and nothing can ever separate God and the human race. Individually we might reject that unity, we might reject the love that comes with it, we might turn our backs on heaven and God and Christ forever. But within the human race as a whole there exists an unbreakable tie with divinity.

Today, in memory of the first procession in honor of Jesus, we bless palms and honor him again. Nearly two thousand years after his opponents tried to silence the people of Jerusalem we are in essence doing what they did. We are claiming Jesus as the Messiah and King sent by God. However, we go even further than they did. We claim Jesus as the Son of God, equal to God the Father in all ways, who with the Holy Spirit are three Persons in one God. A mystery, but a very firm and everlasting fact that we believe and accept with our entire beings. One that we are betting our lives on.

Jesus Christ is our hope and our way to heaven and happiness. Let us follow him through every day of our lives. And to show we want to do that, to publicly renew our pledge of faithfulness to Christ, let us begin our procession.

LET US GO FORTH IN PEACE,PRAISING JESUS OUR MESSIAH,AS DID THE CROWDS WHO WELCOMED HIM TO JERUSALEM!