HOMILY
OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
CELEBRATION OF PALM
SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF THE LORD
Saint Peter's Square
XXXI World Youth Day
Sunday, 20 March 2016
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord!” (cf. Lk 19:38), the crowd of Jerusalem exclaimed
joyfully as they welcomed Jesus. We have made that enthusiasm our own: by
waving our olive and palm branches we have expressed our praise and our joy,
our desire to receive Jesus who comes to us. Just as he entered Jerusalem, so
he desires to enter our cities and our lives. As he did in the Gospel, riding
on a donkey, so too he comes to us in humility; he comes “in the name of the
Lord”. Through the power of his divine love he forgives our sins and reconciles
us to the Father and with ourselves.
Jesus is pleased with the crowd’s showing their
affection for him. When the Pharisees ask him to silence the children and the
others who are acclaiming him, he responds: “I tell you, if these were silent,
the very stones would cry out” (Lk 19:40). Nothing could dampen
their enthusiasm for Jesus’ entry. May nothing prevent us from finding in him
the source of our joy, true joy, which abides and brings peace; for it is Jesus
alone who saves us from the snares of sin, death, fear and sadness.
Today’s liturgy teaches us that the Lord has
not saved us by his triumphal entry or by means of powerful miracles. The
Apostle Paul, in the second reading, epitomizes in two verbs the path of
redemption: Jesus “emptied” and “humbled” himself (Phil 2:7-8).
These two verbs show the boundlessness of God’s love for us. Jesus emptied
himself: he did not cling to the glory that was his as the Son of God, but
became the Son of man in order to be in solidarity with us sinners in all
things; yet he was without sin. Even more, he lived among us in “the condition
of a servant” (v. 7); not of a king or a prince, but of a servant. Therefore he
humbled himself, and the abyss of his humiliation, as Holy Week shows us, seems
to be bottomless.
The first sign of this love “without end” (Jn 13:1)
is the washing of the feet. “The Lord and Master” (Jn 13:14) stoops
to his disciples’ feet, as only servants would have done. He shows us by
example that we need to allow his love to reach us, a love which bends down to
us; we cannot do any less, we cannot love without letting ourselves be loved by
him first, without experiencing his surprising tenderness and without accepting
that true love consists in concrete service.
But this is only the beginning. The humiliation
of Jesus reaches its utmost in the Passion: he is sold for thirty pieces of
silver and betrayed by the kiss of a disciple whom he had chosen and called his
friend. Nearly all the others flee and abandon him; Peter denies him three
times in the courtyard of the temple. Humiliated in his spirit by mockery,
insults and spitting, he suffers in his body terrible brutality: the blows, the
scourging and the crown of thorns make his face unrecognizable. He also
experiences shame and disgraceful condemnation by religious and political
authorities: he is made into sin and considered to be
unjust. Pilate then sends him to Herod, who in turn sends him to the Roman
governor. Even as every form of justice is denied to him, Jesus also
experiences in his own flesh indifference, since no one wishes to take
responsibility for his fate. And I think of the many people, so many outcasts,
so many asylum seekers, so many refugees, all of those for whose fate no one
wishes to take responsibility. The crowd, who just a little earlier had acclaimed
him, now changes their praise into a cry of accusation, even to the point of
preferring that a murderer be released in his place. And so the hour of death
on the cross arrives, that most painful form of shame reserved for traitors,
slaves and the worst kind of criminals. But isolation, defamation and pain are
not yet the full extent of his deprivation. To be totally in solidarity with
us, he also experiences on the Cross the mysterious abandonment of the Father.
In his abandonment, however, he prays and entrusts himself: “Father, into your
hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46). Hanging from the wood of the
cross, beside derision he now confronts the last temptation: to come down from
the Cross, to conquer evil by might and to show the face of a powerful and
invincible God. Jesus, however, even here at the height of his annihilation,
reveals the true face of God, which is mercy. He forgives
those who are crucifying him, he opens the gates of paradise to the repentant
thief and he touches the heart of the centurion. If the mystery of evil is
unfathomable, then the reality of Love poured out through him is infinite,
reaching even to the tomb and to hell. He takes upon himself all our pain that
he may redeem it, bringing light to darkness, life to death, love to hatred.
God’s way of acting may seem so far removed
from our own, that he was annihilated for our sake, while it seems difficult
for us to even forget ourselves a little. He comes to save us; we are called to
choose his way: the way of service, of giving, of forgetfulness of ourselves.
Let us walk this path, pausing in these days to gaze upon the Crucifix; it is
the “royal seat of God”. I invite you during this week to gaze often upon this
“royal seat of God”, to learn about the humble love which saves and gives life,
so that we may give up all selfishness, and the seeking of power and fame. By
humbling himself, Jesus invites us to walk on his path. Let us turn our faces
to him, let us ask for the grace to understand at least something of the mystery
of his obliteration for our sake; and then, in silence, let us contemplate the
mystery of this Week.
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