Sunday Gospel
Reflections
Palm Sunday
– April 13, 2025, Cycle C
Lk
22:14-23:56
Fr. Joseph M. Rampino
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“This is my body, which
will be given for you.” These
words, nestled into the heart of this weekend’s Palm Sunday
readings, might not be the first to come to mind when we
consider this Sunday’s rituals.
Far more evocative are the waving of the palms, the cries
of “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and then later, the reading of
the Passion, and the cries of, “Crucify him, crucify him!”
Yet, in the simple
words with which Christ celebrates the first Mass, recounted for
us at the beginning of the Passion narrative, lies the true
meaning of all our celebration: Christ’s generous and perfect
love in the face of our spiritual poverty and need.
The readings, as they
do each year at this moment, emphasize the fickleness and
instability of the crowds, the disciples, and by extension, us. At the beginning of
Mass, the crowds hail Christ as king, going to great lengths to
smooth the path even for the humble donkey he rides. By the end of the
Passion, not only has the general crowd rejected Christ
entirely, calling for his torture and death, but even his
friends betray him.
Luke’s account gives us
the story of two apostles in particular, Judas, of course,
guides the authorities to Christ and betrays him with a wicked
kiss. Then Peter,
despite having been warned of his coming trial, denies Jesus
three times before realizing what he has done and running,
weeping bitter tears as he goes.
The rest of the apostle, save John, scatter.
Wherever we look at the
merely human in our readings today, we see chaos, instability,
change and failure of some kind.
If we have honestly taken stock of our own souls this
Lent, each of us can point to places in our lives where we too,
in ways great or small have turned away from the friendship of
Christ. We, like
all others, have not had the ability to remain faithful to God
on our own.
Yet, how does the Lord
answer all of this weakness present in the people he made and
loves? We mentioned
it at the beginning: “This is my body, which will be given for
you.”
The Lord, seeing our
weakness, our frailty, our confusion, our fear and our sin,
continued to love us, and chose to offer himself for our sake. He chose to die the
death our sins deserved so that we could live. He chose to lament the
sins that don’t yet even bother us, so that we could rejoice
with the father. He
offers his body as the price for the resurrection of our bodies,
his blood for our blood, his heart for our hearts.
Not only this, but he
left us forever a sign, and more than a sign, of that great
offering in the form of the Holy Eucharist. We do not merely have
to remember that Christ our God handed himself over to free us. That offering lives in
our churches, made truly present at every Mass. There, Jewus in his
body and blood renews the one offering he made during his
Passion, every day, in times and places that are multiplied for
our convenience.
As we begin Holy Week
and turn our minds to consider the Passion, death and
Resurrection of Christ for us, we should remember that in the
Eucharist, we can contemplate this total act of love every
single day. He has
given us such constancy in the face of our instability. The least we can do to
begin accepting that unconquered love is reverently to believe
in, to hope in, and to love Jesus present in the Eucharist,
resting in out tabernacle.