The meaning of
Palm Sunday

If only for a brief moment yesterday morning the Church commemorated the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of Christ more than 2,000 years ago.

In Bata, the Our Lady of Lourdes Parish church held the blessing of the Palms at a nearby school house.

White-clad young girls, with wings on their shoulders, threw flowers and sang hosannas as did the crowd of Jews who greeted the Christ when He first entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey.

Per se, that should have alerted the crowd to the symbolism of that ass. Although heralded as the Messiah, the King of the Jews, Jesus did not reject the accolade of the crowd which was soon to cry out for His blood.

The Palm Sunday procession wound its way through the principal street of the barangay toward the Our Lady of Lourdes Parish where the palm-waving crowd also greeted with enthusiasm Fr. Boy Tan.

But Fr. Tan noted a common phenomenon – the many bystanders just gaped at the procession and the rite of the palm with curiosity, not with reverence as it should have been done to the past.

In short, most Holy Week Christians no longer understand the spiritual implication of the celebration that is intended to remind us to introspect, and repent and make up with God for our sins.

In short, while the Church was full of people, there were more people outside for whom life remained as usual. Instead of pausing a while to ponder the mystery of the Redemption, the deaths, Passion and Resurrection of Christ, majority of Catholics remained unconcerned about the events of the Holy Week.

Of course, majority of visitors simply spent their time in family reunions. And, of course, that means few of them truly took time out to meditate on the meaning of the Passion of Christ.

Still, the Gospel of Mark yesterday, recounted the story of Christ and the event that eventually led to His death on the Cross.

It starts off with Jesus in the house of Simon in Bethany when a women entered carrying a precious jar of expensive perfume which she poured on Him.

His apostles and other followers demurred. For them it was just a useless waste of money.

But Jesus chided them and prophesied, pointing out that what she had done was to remember that the Good News is passion. An enduring prophesy to the tender-hearted woman.

Later, the entire gospel story shows us Jesus displaying His keen appreciation of human frailties, and how we can betray our avowals of faithfulness to God and the Savior.

And there was also story of Judas hastening Christ’s betrayal.

Time and again, the apostles tried to assert their loyalty to the Savior, including the protestations by Peter that he would never abandon Him.

But God saw through Peter’s humanity and his frailty predicting that he who promised never to desert him would ultimately disavow having known Him when the fear of punishment engulfed Him.

The Gospel message showed us the drama that preceded His Crucified. And Christ forged ahead with what the Father had told Him to do. – to sacrifice himself for the sake of humanity.

We can only gape with awe as we watched Him, the Man-God, bearing everything and all the insults and the most despicable act of men toward another man. We can only imagine the agony of Christ, the Man-God, as He went through the picture of what He was going to suffer – the anguish He felt when He could have stopped the Passion but refused to do so because that was what the Father had commanded Him to do.

We can only imagine the humiliating experience of a Man-God who could command the waves of the sea, humbly accepting the crowning of thorns and the blows He had at the hands of His tormentors, and, when Pontius Pilate opted to follow the cry of the public to crucify Him and to release Barabas instead.

A guiltless man offered as sacrifice for a convicted criminal. Simply because Pilate felt his position as Procurator of Judas threatened had he opted to release Christ in lieu of Barabas.

The story of the Passion of Christ simply tells us in stark view how we often tell the same situation as the Jews of those times.

If we just spend a short time meditating on the Gospel story of Christ’s Passion, we cannot but fall down on our knees and ask forgiveness for God for the sins we have committed that sent Christ to the Cross.

And, yet, the same Man-God pointed out that He was sent not for the just but for the sinners. Which we all are.*

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