4th Passiontide
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| Memmo |
Palm Sunday
Matthew 21: 1-11
And they
approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus
sent two disciples ahead and said to them, “Go to the village which you see
before you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with
her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him
that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away.”
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
‘Say to the daughter of Zion,
Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.
Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and on a foal of the beast of
burden.’
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought
the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them, and Jesus sat on them.
Many out of the large crowd spread their clothes on
the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!
Hosannah in the highest! [Sing to Him in the highest heights!]
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who
is he?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in
Galilee.”
4th
Passiontide Sunday
Palm
Sunday
April
1, 2007
Matthew
21: 1-11
This
mysterious picture – Christ Jesus asks for a donkey and its foal to be brought
to Him. Upon them He will ride into Jerusalem, the city of peace. Why donkeys?
Why two?
Francis
of Assisi famously called his body Brother Donkey. The donkeys of our bodies
are the earthly means of conveyance for our souls and spirits. By nature, the
donkey is stubborn and willful. For most of us, if the body decides to go
somewhere, say, into illness, it is about all we can do to hang on for the
ride.
Christ
chooses donkeys as His means of conveyance to picture the final phase of His
incarnation. He is choosing the human body as the instrument of His final
battleground. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem foretells His full entry into
the body of Jesus. He rides the donkey of the physical nature, both the old
body, and the new immortal one he will inhabit at His resurrection. The people
sense this; but their jubilation is premature. These two ‘donkeys’ are carrying
Him where He wants to go – deeper into the body, into the suffering, even into
the death that the body offers. Rejoicing will be appropriate days later when the
body has been transformed at the Last Supper into a new form; when His
suffering has borne fruit; when death has been overthrown because He has
wrested human immortality from the death of matter.
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| Shuplyak |
His
body has become transformed. At the Last Supper and its iterations He wields
the power to make bread and wine into His body and blood, so that He can feed
us His own immortality. With His help, we too can make our sufferings fruitful.
Through our connection with Him, bit by bit, we can build the new body that is
not subject to death, the Christ-body that comes to life in us, through us, in
our offering.
