Palm Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons

I celebrated 35 years of priesthood recently, not with any great party, but as a reflective anniversary looking back at what has been a very fulfilling ministry for me, also a calling that I would not swap for any other. But as I grow older, a bit like Thomas Aquinas, I find that all the knowledge I have of Theology, Scripture, Liturgy, whatever, does not do justice to the heart of our faith, which is quite simply centered on the person of Jesus Christ. I continually discover that my own faith gets simpler but deeper, like you, I follow the Lord as best I can and as one of his pastors try to help others find him, but I begin to see him more than I used to in people and situations I did not expect, very much more at the margins of life, as well as in familiar places like the gospel readings and communal worship.

Palm Sunday is when we celebrate that great entry of Jesus into Jerusalem; the Messiah comes in humility, welcomed with cries of ‘Hosanna’, which means ‘save us now, I beseech you’! That perhaps is the motto for this feast, which challenges us to look again at our commitment to loving, knowing, welcoming and following him on our own journey! Read Matthew’s gospel it has lots of hidden details, which tell us that this entry into Jerusalem was an historical happening full of meaning for us all.

The coming of Jesus on an ass is a reference to Zechariahs prophecy ( Zec 9.9) which tells of the Messiah coming in meekness not majesty, whose outward raiment is poverty, not glory or riches. Here is the poor Messiah riding on somebody else’s animal, sitting on an unused, therefore ‘sacred’ colt, fit to carry the ‘most holy one’, yet again it is the beasts of the earth that recognize God where we do not!

All of this points to a reversal of power structures, yes even in the Church, for this Messiah loves the poor, forgives the sinner, reaches out to the dispossessed, is there at the margins in all situations, his gift is mercy without end! He challenges the fashions of our own age where covetousness, ambition, pride and arrogance are hallmarks of ‘success’. At the end of this Gospel this question is asked: are we prepared to take on the real demands of following him?

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.