Homily for Palm Sunday
Pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because it will always bring with it renunciation and pain. When we know that the way of love – this exodus, this going out of oneself – is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish…If we say that suffering is the inner side of love, we then also understand why it is so important to learn how to suffer…
Today is Passion or Palm Sunday. We have just taken part in our first solemn proclamation of our Lord’s Passion, this year taken from St Luke’s Gospel. Today begins the most sacred week of our year, of our lives, as Catholics, this Holy Week in which we, as the Body of Christ, liturgically and sacramentally accompany our Divine Head, our Lord Jesus Christ, though His Passion, Death and Resurrection.
I wish I could claim those beautiful, insightful words with which I began this homily as my own, but they are, in fact, part of the powerful teaching of our late Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Let me reiterate what he said: When we know that the way of love – this exodus, this going out of oneself – is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature.
Our second reading today, St Paul’s famous Christological hymn from Philippians, expresses this truth in terms of Christ’s self-emptying, His kenosis. Rather, he emptied himself, / taking the form of a slave, / coming in human likeness; / and found human in appearance, / he humbled himself, / becoming obedient to the point of death, / even death on a cross. You and I will pray and chant those words in the Church’s liturgy very often in the course of this coming week. This self-emptying is what Pope Benedict called “this exodus, this going out of oneself.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ shared fully in our human nature, our human condition, without sinning. And therefore, He necessarily had a full share in the inevitable experience of human suffering. In being obedient to the Father out of love, God’s only-begotten Son willingly took upon Himself the experience of suffering. What you and I, indeed the entire Church, is called to do all during this Holy Week is to walk with our Lord in His Passion and Death and Resurrection. And we are called to see in His Way of the Cross His “Way of Love”, as Pope Benedict called it, this “going out of oneself,” this “exodus.” We might as well call today, Passion Sunday, “Divine Love Sunday” because “suffering is the inner side of love,” as Benedict XVI wrote.
And it is in this most holy of weeks that you and I learn the absolutely essential human lesson of “how to suffer.” We are not to walk the path of suffering alone. No, we are called to follow in our Lord’s own footsteps, in solidarity with all of our suffering brothers and sisters throughout the world, and in so doing, we are brought to our “full stature” in Christ; we become more the persons God intends us to be: men and women made in the image and likeness of God, who are most “like God” when we imitate God’s own self-giving, self-sacrificing love, made manifest in the Passion and Death of our Lord.
You and I don’t have to seek out new and inventive ways of suffering. As Pope Benedict put it bluntly, “Pain is part of being human.” Our Lord said in His Sermon on the Mount: Today has troubles enough of its own, or to express it more eloquently: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. If we love, even just a little bit, then we will suffer. It is when you and I live in union of heart and mind with our Lord Jesus Christ, that our own unique share in the mystery of suffering can become our participation in the Way of Love, can become our share in the very life of God, who is love. We must not let this opportunity to become better human beings pass us by. Fr. Brian Mulcahy, O.P.