OMELIE / Omelie EN

02 apr 2023

02/04/2023 – Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord- year A

02/04/2023 – Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord- year A

Reading 1 IS 50,4-7 Psalm 21 Reading 2 PHIL 2,6-11 Gospel MT 26,14 - 27,66

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

It looks impossibile that a blessing and enthusiastic crowd, just in a matter of days becomes hostile or at least indifferent. If we were to take a place in front of Jesus to look at the crowds, we would soon be dragged fron praise to criticism, from welcoming to rejecting.

Today, after having waved the branches while singing and applauding Jesus, we witness His rejection by the most influential people both politically and religiously. However, the Word we listen to wants to help us pick sides more freely.

The prophet declares and describes the situation Jesus is living, but is also telling us its deep motivation. He is truly offended and rejected and put to death, but the reason for this are not His crimes, but ours, our sins. The fruit is not His obliteration, but our salvation.

And so our listening to the passion, the sufferings, the death and burial becomes a loving listening, participation and offering of ourselves.

Let us listen with pain to what men do to Jesus, and we join His silence, His patience and endurance to join Him in telling the Father: “Not as I will, but as you will”. We will repeat these words all week long, which needs to be “holy”, a special week, rich in thoughts, words and loving actions towards He who men have rejected: we welcome Him! Each one of us will take His side, not so much in front of the others, but in front of the internal doubts which arise sometimes in our thoughts when we face important decisions which require sacrifice.