In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.We have come to another Palm Sunday, and so we have come to the gateway of another Holy Week. Year by year I am struck by the misrecognition that characterizes this liturgy, wherein we begin by hailing Jesus as the Messiah who “comes in the name of the Lord” – and we end with the hopes and expectations we have placed in Jesus transformed into derision and the certainty of only one thing: this cannot be the Messiah.
Of course we know that he is. And the juxtaposition of the two Gospel readings we have heard today is meant to drive home the point that the Christ does not conform to our expectations. In the first Gospel, from the liturgy of the palms at the beginning, Jesus rides into Jerusalem with “the multitude of the disciples” rejoicing and praising God with a loud voice (Luke 19.37). But the jubilation of the crowds, with which we began, stands in stark contrast to the silence of the cross, which we have now heard, and in stark contrast to the silence of “his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee,” standing at a distance and seeing these things.
What links the two parts of today’s liturgy is the sign of the cross we make at every mass at the words “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” When I was in seminary it was fashionable among people sensitive to feminist concerns to change the wording of the Benedictus to “blessed is THE ONE who comes in the name of the Lord,” so as not to leave women out of the blessedness. But the truth is that there is only ONE who is blessed because there is only ONE who comes in the name of the Lord, and the same crowds who meet Jesus with this acclamation as he rides into Jerusalem, will clamor for his crucifixion, and wag their heads at his death. The misrecognition of the blessed one, who comes in the name of the Lord, is alive and well today.
But what can be said now, at the foot of the cross? God has spoken in the person of his eternal Word, and there is, in a sense, nothing left to say. “…The blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see”, to whom belong honor and eternal dominion (1 Timothy 6.15f) – THIS God has revealed himself on the cross. For hearts open to the initiative and operation of grace, for those who follow him, who receive him, who believe in his name, there is really nothing left to say. And so his acquaintances and the women who had followed him stand in silence and LOOK. (Luke 23.49).
What then is the word of the cross? It is a silent word. It is a word best apprehended – ONLY apprehended – by those who can SHUT UP and LOOK. The eloquence of God’s silence can be understood only by a heart that is itself capable of silence. The word of the cross is thereby first, for us, a word of judgment. We should be convicted by this silence when, in all honesty, we find ourselves more often than not among the very talkative: the council that interrogates Jesus, Pilate and Herod who question him, the derisive soldiers, the jeering crowds. But now, looking on this silent and dead Jesus, can we recognize the King of kings? If we peel off the many layers of religious discourse and preconceptions each of us has caked around his consciousness, can we gaze on this corpse, with the centurion of St. Matthew’s Gospel, and confess him truly to be the Son of God? (Matthew 27.54)
We cannot stand patiently in silence because we lack courage, we will not submit to the judgment of the King’s silence. As we come to Golgotha we begin to suspect the truth of what Jesus reveals. All along, from the silence within Mary’s womb to the silence of the cross and the sepulcher, Jesus of Nazareth has revealed this “blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” The fact that this God would reveal himself thus should frighten us, because it means our judgment and the condemnation of our world. Standing there, looking at the cross in silence, with an open heart, means having to admit the absolute worthlessness of what we hold dear – of our ways, our values, our possessions, our notions, our politics, our projects, jobs, titles. Because HERE, at Golgotha, we see how the immortal, all-powerful God is revealed in the world.
Hearing what God has to say means being willing to plead guilty, to be judged, to be stripped. At the cross, if we are willing, the words of Jesus we cite in consolation with respect to others, may finally find a place in our own hearts: to be divine within the world means being poor, naked, homeless, meek; it is to mourn, to hunger and thirst, to be merciful, to be pure, always and only to pursue peace, to be persecuted, to be reviled, misunderstood, maligned and slandered, and ultimately it means to be dead. That’s what it means to be divine in this world.
But who wants to admit that? Who wants to accept it? Hardly anyone did in Jesus’ day, and I think hardly anyone does in ours. The very next verse after the end of the Gospel from the liturgy of the palms, says “when [Jesus] drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.’” (Luke 19.41f)
What darkens our vision are the things we wish to hold onto, and smuggle into the kingdom. As Franny said to Zooey in J.D. Salinger’s novel, we lack “the courage to be an absolute nobody.” If it weren’t so, we would rejoice in every circumstance, we would give thanks and praise to God with every breath, and we would gladly forsake everything to follow Jesus. Rather than finding the counsels of Christian perfection impossible, we would find them easy and light.
The Gospel is perspicuous for those whose hearts are pure, with eyes to see and ears to hear, but all too often it remains impenetrable to us, because of the hardness of our hearts. We cling so tightly to our desires, our predispositions, our little programs of resentment and petty hatreds, and we lack the courage to be an absolute nobody. But on Easter morning, which is just one week away, we will learn that peace is made “by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1.20), and in no other way.
With this in mind, I urge you all to come to each of the liturgies of the great Three Days, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. St. Paul said, “The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him,” (2 Timothy 2.11) and the liturgies of this week are how we endure with him together as a community, and in the communion of the Catholic Church, year by year. It is the means by which Jesus makes the way of his suffering and death mystically present to his bride and his body, the Church, whose members we are.
But more than this, and by means of this, I urge you to make room for the reality of the Gospel in your life. In the secrecy of your heart stand and look on the cross in silence. Take time to do this, with a quiet mind, abandoning your preconceptions. Sit quietly and behold your victorious king, who comes to you in this humility and abnegation, and ask yourself what the reality of the cross – the reality of divine life in this world – what it means for you and for your life in this world.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
