| In the liturgy for Palm Sunday, there is a Procession at the beginning and a reading of the Passion during the Liturgy of the Word. That same structure has been in place in the Roman Mass for at least 900 years, as evidenced by St. Bernard's comments on it in his Sermons on Palm Sunday. In his 2nd Sermon for Palm Sunday, he points out that the attitude of Jesus in both the Procession (the Triumphal entry into Jerusalem) and the Passion is the same: humble love. The same cannot be said for the attitude of the crowd, which ranges from "Hosanna to the son of David!" to "Crucify him!" Jesus is, indeed, the "same yesterday, today and for ever" (Heb 13:8). While we readily admit that Scriptural truth, we have to ask ourselves, was Jesus really the same, always suffering like He does in the Passion? What about His death? Doesn't that introduce something new into the Godhead? To the contrary, the same qualities of humble love, as noted by St. Bernard, always mark the Son of God. Christ is the one who empties himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil 2:6-11). He is also the Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). A posture of self-sacrificing love goes to the essence of what God has done for us in Christ, as Pope John Paul II explains in his analysis of Ephesians in his Theology of the Body, "the gift given by God to man in Christ is a 'total' or 'radical' gift" (TOB 95b:4). This gift began even "before the creation of the world" (Eph 1:4) and then was revealed to us in time, especially in the Passion. Who can listen to the account of the Passion on Palm Sunday and doubt the totality or radicality of God's self-gift to us in Christ? At the same time, Pope John Paul II gives us another lens through which to view the self-gift of God, which is so graphically presented to us in the Passion. Pope John Paul II presents this self-gift through the "analogy of spousal love," drawing from the text of Ephesians. In Ephesians we read that - "Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, in order to make her holy" (Eph 5:25-26)--an endowment of grace that can be defined in its entirety as the sacrament of redemption. This redemptive gift of self "for" the Church also includes- according to Pauline thought-"Christ's gift of self to the Church, in the image of the spousal relation that unites husband and wife in marriage." (TOB 97:2) What Christ is doing in the Passion, in other words, is spousal, like a bridegroom fighting for his bride. It is the great romance. With each step closer to Calvary, He is winning her back. Christ's self-gift for us, consummated on the cross, takes on the aspects of "indissoluble" spousal love, "just as spouses...unite in marriage," (TOB 97:4). There is also an element of fruitfulness: "The Church, too, united with Christ as the wife with her husband, draws from the sacrament of redemption her whole spiritual fruitfulness and motherhood." (TOB 97:4) The analogy of spousal love helps us understand how St Augustine can describe the cross as a marriage bed, not of pleasure but of pain (Sermo Suppositus 120). Ultimately, in the radical and total self-gift of the Passion, Christ is revealing to us the great "Mystery...[that] becomes in the sacrament of redemption a visible reality in the indissoluble union of Christ with the Church, which the author of Ephesians presents as the spousal union of the two, husband and wife." (TOB 97:4) With these thoughts in mind, when we hear the account of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we can pierce through the initial appearance of graphic violence to an interior Mystery which is heroic, spousal, and even romantic; which reveals the love that God has always had for us. It reveals a love that is indissoluble, fruitful and never says, "Enough!" This love is the same yesterday, today and forever. The same humble Jesus who rides into Jerusalem as a peasant king on a colt (Matthew 21:5; Zechariah 9:9) is the Son who was in the bosom of the Father from all eternity (John 1:18). This Sunday He comes to us as a Bridegroom who redeems His bride with His own Blood, poured out on the cross and continually given to us in the Holy Eucharist. |
{UAH} John Rukumbura is now an MP in Rwanda
0 comments:
Post a Comment