Palm Sunday
April 9, 2017
Matt 21: 1-11
Phil 2: 6-11
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.
“The master has need
of them” (Matt 21: 3).
It’s reported that St. John
Vianney, the holy curé of Ars, France, once said, “If Samson could slay 1,000
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, imagine what the Lord can do with a complete
ass”—referring to himself, famously inept as a student in the seminary, but the
Lord’s instrument for forgiving sinners who for years and years in the mid-19th
century flocked to him to confess, as many as 300 penitents a day coming to his
out-of-the-way country parish, and he spent as much as 16 hours a day in the
confessional for most of the last 30 years of his life! (Some of you are old enuf to remember the old
confessionals, which were very uncomfortable to sit in for 1 hours, let alone
16—and in the curé’s case, without heat in the winter or a/c in the summer.)
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Christ Enters Jerusalem
Pietro Lorenzetti (fresco, Assisi)
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Assuredly,
St. John Vianney was no ass, complete or incomplete, but a priest filled with
the simple wisdom of our Lord.
But
in the 1st gospel for today, that of the Lord’s triumphal entry of Jerusalem, he
sends 2 of his disciples to fetch an ass and its colt with the message to their
owner, “The master has need of them.”
Reflect
on that for a moment: Jesus needed a
donkey to enter Jerusalem. He had to ask
some friend of his—we assume the ass’s owner was a friend—for a little
help. Just as the Son of God humbly
descended from heaven, taking on our human flesh with all its weaknesses, its
limitations, its sufferings, as St. Paul writes today (Phil 2:7), he chose also
to be dependent on the help of other human beings. He needed to borrow a donkey for this phase
of his divine mission.
Look at yourself—not
as a jackass but as an instrument of the Lord.
Mother Teresa called herself just a pen in God’s hand that he could
write with. Yes, the Lord Jesus has a
plan for you, a use for you, whoever you are:
man, woman, child, parent, senior citizen, student, laborer,
businessman, lawyer, craftsman, farmer, nurse, teacher, homemaker. The master has need of you for some purpose
of his, which might be something very simple like smiling on someone who’s
feeling down, or something grander like teaching catechism or healing the sick,
and which might vary from day to day.
There’s
just one condition on the Lord’s ability to use you. It’s not being a donkey but being like Jesus,
who humbled himself and was obedient to what God asked of him, even when that
led to suffering. God can’t work with
someone who’s proud, someone who’s so full of himself that he won’t listen to
God (or anyone else).
Now
you might ask why God would command that his Son should suffer, “obedient to
the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). I don’t think the Father willed that his Son
should die; rather, the Son was loyal and obedient to God even tho that meant
that evil people would do him in, in the most painful and humiliating way they
could concoct. Compare it to the obedience
to God of a recent martyr, reported in a blog post 2 days ago[1]:
A Coptic Christian father of two who was on a “kill
list” and tracked for days by Islamic State militants in Sinai refused to
renounce his faith in Christ when given a chance to “save” himself before being
executed, his wife said.
The British news outlet The
Sunday Times [April 3] reports that the widow of
58-year-old Copt Bahgat Zakhar, one of eight Christians killed in the coastal
town of Al Arish in just a three-week span in February, detailed the moment her
husband met his fate.
Zakhar, who was a veterinary surgeon, was
reportedly named on a jihadi “kill list” that was published online. As reported,
jihadis have anonymously posted “kill lists” online that feature churches and
prominent Christians across Egypt to target.[2]
Zakhar’s widow, Fawzia, said in her interview with
the Times that an eyewitness
explained that when the militants arrived, Zakhar tried to shake their hands.
They quickly forced him onto a concrete terrace, forced him to his knees and
demanded that he convert to Islam.
“Repent, infidel. Convert and save yourself,” the
witness recalled one of the jihadis saying.
According to the witness, Zakhar simply shook his
head in refusal. The militants then responded by fatally shooting him and
leaving him dead on the floor.
I don’t think we can say that God willed the death of Bahgat Zakhar. But we can say that Bahgat Zakhar was
obedient even to the point of death; he was a martyr for Christ. How God will use his life and death, we can’t
say. So much of life and death and the
ways of salvation are hidden in mystery.
But we can be sure that God will exalt Bahgat Zakhar and bestow on him a
glorious name in eternity.
And so will he exalt us if we are humble
enuf, here in central Illinois, for him to use us for whatever purposes he has
in mind.
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| Holy Cross, Champaign, decorated for Palm Sunday 2017 |
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