The Palm Sunday Message is:
“Thy Will be done.”
We all know the way Jesus taught His disciples to pray: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven.”
We are all comforted in praying the Lord’s prayer. I learned this prayer I believe when I was
six years old and have been praying every day since then,
In today’s Passion Gospel according
to Mark, we are forced to watch Jesus do what He teaches, act on what He has
told others to do.
From the Gospel account, Jesus began
to be troubled and distressed. Then He
said to them. “My soul is sorrowful even
to death. Remain here and watch.” He advanced a little and fell to the ground
and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, “Abba,
Father, all things are possible to you.
Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”
As we pray over this passion
account and are in very much in touch with the humanity of Jesus in the face of
suffering, we need to be to touch with our own experience as well. Namely, it is miserable to be weak. It is not want where we want to be -- seen as
being weak and defeated, without any power.
Yet, in the Passion account,
Jesus enters into human weakness and dwells there – seized, bound, beaten, belittled,
hung, and pierced. Jesus will know the weakness
of human suffering and death. He will
put aside all crowns, whether of earth or heaven or hell, and do as he teaches
his own. It is not that Jesus of
Nazareth has no will; for, without it, he would not be human. It is that Jesus of Nazareth puts his will,
as he puts his flesh, before the Father and into the Father’s hands.
As we reflect upon the will of
the Father, it is not the Father who desires shed blood. That
hunger is ours, we who would not be weak, we who would not serve. Jesus is not handing himself over to the Father
to be killed, but to men and women who call, in every land and in every age,
for blood. But he is handing over the
Father his own human will to avoid this pain, and to hand over his human will
to retaliate and to hate. Jesus hands
himself over to be crucified, and he will look on those who suffer with him and
on those who desert him with eyes and heart and mind that are one with the Father.
He will be abandoned, but he will
not abandon others. Jesus says: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with
me in paradise
Jesus was faithful to the will of
God to the last moment of his earthly life.
What about us? As we pray the
Lord’s prayer, may we ask for the grace that we, in the circumstances of our
own life, will do the will of God on earth as it is in heaven.
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