Last Ash Wednesday, Graciela invited us to “make a slow and prayerful reading of the Pope’s message for this Lent”. From it she stressed:
“Let us not tire of doing good, because, if we do not falter, we will reap the fruits in due time. Therefore, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all” Gal. 6, 9-10a.
It often happens to us that we doubt what is good, what is good, what I should do… Who will teach us what is good?
We could call Holy Week the school of good. We invite you to take advantage of each day’s Gospel to look at Jesus and let him teach you what it is to do good.
Palm Sunday is God’s time. He realises that the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is a humble entry. Humble because he enters on the back of an “inelegant” animal, from everyday life, from working on the land, accustomed to the burden, the sun and the rain. Humble because he allows himself to be acclaimed but does not believe it, he does not appropriate it, he does not gloat over it, he joins in the joy of the people but does not let himself be carried away by it. He keeps, as we would say, his feet on the ground. He knows his mission, he knows his destiny, he knows who his centre is.
But the Gospel of today’s Mass is not the entry into Jerusalem (which is read at the beginning) but the Passion of the Lord. This is the central mystery of the Christian faith, of the community, which we will be assimilating throughout the week. The Passion that culminates in the Resurrection.
We have, then, a kind of double entrance to the mystery. That of Jesus in Jerusalem celebrating with the people, but which, in reality, is the entrance into the Passion. The joy of this Sunday has to do with a whole passion. The deep and serene joy of one who has discovered that his life is led by the Lord.
This Easter 2022 invites us to face life as Jesus faces acclaim and suffering. Acclamation he does not appropriate, suffering he neither shuns nor returns. He assumes it and thus transforms it into a source of life for his mother, for John, for the one who is executed next to him, for the Roman centurion and for each one of us.
Let us ask for the grace that, following Jesus Christ closely, we may understand how he calls each one of us to do good in this time of ours, pierced by Covid, by war, by unjustified aggression, by outrageous abuses, by personal difficulties of all kinds, by… Add each one’s circumstances and let the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus illuminate them. And, in illuminating them, may the ways appear that lead us to give hope, joy and consolation.
