04/04/2004: "Thoughts on today's Gospel reading"

Today we celebrate Palm Sunday and read the Passion account. It is such an interesting thing to celebrate Christ coming into Jerusalem when we know that it ends in his death. Of course we know that in death he triumphed, but we don't seem to celebrate Palm Sunday as if we're celebrating his soon to occur death. We celebrate it as if he humanly triumphed in going into Jerusalem.

In any case, the section of the Passion account according to Luke that I used for my Quote of the Day is the heart of the anti-Semetic charges against Mel Gibson and in essence, against Christians. What is forgotten is that we all must accept, that we too are part of this crowd. The biggest mistake that one can make is to be arrogant enough to think that they'd be a better person and avoid the temptation to let our pride get in the way of our faith in a critical moment like this one.

We all fail God at times and there is no reason to elevate ourselves over the crowd. They failed just like we do. Today, all Mass attending Catholics yelled out as a part of the Gospel reading, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" to remind ourselves of this truth. May we all have the courage to embrace our weakness, pick up our crosses and turn to God and ask for His forgiveness.