Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Ephrem Arcement
Palm Sunday C - April 10, 2022
The Liturgy of the Palms:
The Liturgy of the Word:
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!
It has been said that the spiritual life is what one does with one’s fears, and I largely agree. Fear has a way of either making us cower and hide or, with some inspiration and faith, to stand up taller, fight harder and overcome. Ever since the ruddy, young David took down the towering Goliath, humankind loves a good underdog story.
As we know, the “greatest story ever told” is about such an underdog: how a young, simple Jewish man from Nazareth overcame the power of death and brought eternal life to all who desire it. It’s the story of the confrontation between the reign of a powerful and violent “Satan” and the reign of a hidden and unassuming God. And one of the greatest lessons followers of Jesus Christ have had to learn ever since Jesus called Peter “Satan” was that the reign of God is entered into riding on a donkey rather than a chariot.
As we find ourselves beginning our Holy Week liturgies commemorating the most pivotal and transforming events of human history, we find ourselves confronted with two primal realities: joy and sorrow. We know how the story ends…and this brings us great joy. But we also know that there is no way to resurrection joy but by way of the sorrow of the cross. We are, as St. Paul expressed, on a parabolic journey: we must descend before we ascend. Like the shape of a parabola, we move from the reign of the self to self-emptying to the reign of God, and this means that the sorrow and fear of the cross must be confronted before God can reign supreme in peace and joy over our lives.
In a previous monastic incarnation, I spent several years as a Roman Catholic Benedictine monk teaching courses on the Old and New Testaments to a group of young and often very biblically naive seminarians. One of my goals was to inspire my students to fall in love with the Sacred Scriptures while simultaneously helping them to be honest with the text. But for many young people today, being honest with the text is a direct challenge to their faith and stokes all kinds of fear…along with some stone throwing and accusations of heresy! One such occasion in fact occurred when I was teaching the Servant Songs of the Prophet Isaiah and tried to help my students get into the mind and heart of Christ who, I suggested, must have often used these Servant Songs for his own personal lectio divina. Just imagine, I offered, a young Jesus probably around their age, reading and internalizing these passages and coming to greater and greater realization of his destiny as the very Servant who was called to fulfill these prophecies.
The Lord God has opened my ear,and I was not rebellious,I did not turn backward.I gave my back to those who struck me,and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;I did not hide my facefrom insult and spitting.The Lord God helps me;therefore I have not been disgraced;therefore I have set my face like flint,and I know that I shall not be put to shame;he who vindicates me is near.
This was all too much for one student who raised his hand and said that the Church doesn’t allow us to believe that Jesus didn’t always know that he was the Messiah. I challenged him and told him he was mistaken and received an email the following day with a concession speech which he also sent to the whole class reassuring them, that after some research, Fr. Ephrem was, in fact, not a heretic after all!
I share this story because I continue to hold that our Lord did in fact come to terms with his identity and mission throughout the developing years of his life and that a significant catalyst for him was his own Sacred Scriptures, especially the Servant Songs of Isaiah, which our liturgies this week will feature in a prominent way.
This is important because it is crucial that we look to Jesus and his own parabolic journey to help us make our own. How did he face his fears? And how did he overcome them?
There was perhaps nothing clearer to Jesus, it seems to me, than the fact that his destiny of ushering in the reign of God was replete with suffering. If he did in fact see himself as the Suffering Servant of the prophet Isaiah, then Gethsemane and Golgotha came as no surprise. All four Gospels attest to the fact that Jesus knew that there was no way around the cross. So, what kind of weight he must have bourn from his first realization, probably already as a young man, that his life was to be cut short by the reign of terror and violence and that he was the one destined to be lead as a lamb to the slaughter! How did he have the grace to not cower in fear but to stand up taller and fight and overcome?
The young seminarian might reduce the answer to the fact that he was God. Yes, Jesus was fully divine but also fully human and the dread he experienced about his future was as real as yours and mine would be if we were in a similar situation. A better answer, I believe, is that he was fired with a vision of what his life was and what it meant and this vision gave him a power much greater than the power of fear. The cross became relativized in the light of his ultimate vocation and destiny. He knew that the way of the cross was somehow a part of the mysterious plan of “Abba” who would not, in the end, forsake him. And he became fully convinced that the sacrifice of his life would be the very catalyst for the final destruction of sin and death and pave the way for God’s reign of peace and justice. Every word he spoke, every lesson he taught, every miracle he performed, all poured forth from a heart fully owned by this vision.
Liturgically speaking, and, for some of us, perhaps existentially as well, we now find ourselves in Jerusalem, the city of destiny, awaiting the condemnation of Pilate and the scourge. The cross towers before us like a menacing Goliath and we hear our Lord ask, “will you follow me or will you forsake me?”
It is ultimately a question about what means the most to us: ourselves or our Lord. A question about fear or faith. Before we answer, let us not be like the impetuous Peter but let us soberly consider the stakes and the best way forward. Armed with humility, the knowledge of our own weakness, and the vision of our ultimate purpose and destiny in Christ, let us draw strength and inspiration from the pioneer and perfecter of our faith and continually watch and pray lest we too are brought to the trial. And even if we are and stumble along the way, we are assured that we have a faithful and merciful high priest who is ready to pick us up and egg us on in the fight.
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