Today’s Gospel Story for the Blessing of Palms (Matthew 21:1-11), which prepares us for the Passion Story, is Jesus entering Jerusalem, the beginning of what we have come to know as Holy Week. The majority opinion sees this as a wonderful story again showing how much our Abba loves us. As usual, the minority opinion can take this to a deeper personal level as we read or hear it in the setting of our own life today.
Jesus could endure, even embrace, the terrible events of Holy Week because his whole life was focused on bringing his Abba’s love to everyone he met. He saw this as his meaning. He spent a lot of time time alone with his Abba and then went out to be with the people Abba brought to him. He had a joy which people reacted to. He was rooted in the deep relationship he had with Abba, no matter what was going on in his life at any time, including the sufferings of Holy Week. This relationship was the basis of everything he did, and made it possible for him to endure everything. Even on the Cross as he felt forsaken, he cried out to his Abba in their relationship.
A number of times throughout his ministry Jesus told his followers to live as he lived, to love as he loved. He is calling us to a new way of living, inviting us into the relationship he shares with his Abba. This also means he is asking us to recognize our call to bring our Abba’s love to everyone we meet. This implies that we begin to recognize Abba really loving us. He invites us to spend our own time with Abba, which leads to recognizing Abba constantly happening in our life, often in unexpected situations and persons. This means spending regular quiet time with Abba. It’s worth noting that no matter how much we prepare to recognize Abba happening, it always comes as a surprise. When we think we have things all figured out, which might slow us down, Abba still comes as a surprise.
And so we come eventually to new insights as we experience love, which Teilhard de Chardin saw as the creative and unitive force of the universe, perhaps the DNA of Abba. This is not the emotion of love which we know so well, but the drive to union which is the basis of creation. Jesus makes this love personal, and is what he asks all who would be his followers to live. It is also something which is resisted by any who would prefer power and domination, as we see so clearly these days.
Jesus makes love personal. He sits down and eats with lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, outcasts of all kinds. He sees them, welcomes them, accepts them, loves them. Each of us in invited to ask ourself, “Do I really want this?”. Do I believe in Jesus, in Abba enough that I am willing to let them become the basis of my every day living? Am I open and willing to be the vehicle, the pipeline, for Abba’s love to pass through me and come to them? This can’t be about me feeling good about being a channel of Abba’s love for somebody. It is a worthwhile goal, but it can never be me feeling good about myself. If I am aware of something good happening, my only honest response can be gratefulness and humility. How could Abba choose me for bringing his love to anybody when I don’t even know it myself? This might be reminding me again to freely choose to follow Jesus — spend regular quiet time with Abba.
The events of Holy Week show the intensity of being in love with Abba in my life. As Jesuit Fr Arrupe says, “Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way”. It is not an escape from anything, but an invitation to greater depth. It takes over my days and becomes the basis of everything I do, the theme that pervades my thoughts, as I come to know and recognize Abba happening in and around me. I come to be aware of a certain joy that begins to pervade my life. This is not an attitude that says everything is ok, because there are many times when things are not okay. This joy comes from my awareness that I am rooted in Abba, in a relationship that lasts through the good and the not so good, even bad. This is what Jesus knew and lived, even on the Cross. And this is what he offers us. This joy is not an attitude we adopt that hides our pain and suffering, which we all have. It is something that happens even in the midst of our pain and suffering, because it is based on our ongoing relation of love with Abba as we come step by step to recognize him happening in us always, no matter what our circumstances are. We can face and name our pain while firmly rooted in our awareness of and relationship with Abba, as Jesus is doing before us in the events of Holy Week. And as Jesus showed us, we can, and we must, name and oppose injustice and wrong wherever it is happening, perhaps even take action.
The events of this week are not just a reminder of what happened back then. They offer insight to what is going on in my own life in my everyday here and now. No matter what is going on in my life, no matter what I have dome in my past, Abba is loving me as I am, and asking me to be the vehicle for bringing his love to the people I meet. I can think of many reasons why I, or anybody else for that matter, should not be chosen for this relationship, but I must learn to love as Abba loves me – just as I am. On the cross Jesus says,”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. He says the same about me, and to me. It is almost overwhelming that everybody in my life is here because Abba wants us in a relationship that enables his love to pass through us to each other. We are means of grace for each other each. As Jesus makes clear to me in the events of Holy Week, this is not always easy, but it is always Abba. The basis for all this is our relationship in love with Abba, which offers us joy in whatever is going on, because through it all we are with Abba, and this gives meaning to everything else. Just sayin . . ..