Lk. 19:28-40; Is. 50:4-7; Ps. 22:8-9, 17-20, 23-24; Phil. 2:6-11; Lk. 22:14—23:56
The Lord’s Passion is a cry “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” The Lord cries out the beginning of King David’s prayer, Psalm 22 as his dying prayer of an innocent person. He is the fulfillment of this prophesy and in this psalm, we are given how his suffering will end in victory, “May your hearts enjoy life forever!” and “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord…that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.” Today this prophesy of the Lord is fulfilled in our presence. His death is our deliverance as we gather to enjoy life forever baptized in the Lord as we bend our knees to him. The Lord’s Passion is a cry out from death to victory.
This day we begin our procession outside of the temple of God for his victory over death “to give praise to God aloud and with joy” for being transformed into his temple with rejoicing hearts. The temple he rebuilt in three days is his body and he has given us a body to be a temple of the Lord. We should reflect as our Lenten journey comes to an end how the Lord has done great things for us transforming us into a body purified by grace to be a temple of the Lord. His mighty deeds remain in the midst of a world that cries out “crucify him” with the evil of war, abortion, gender dysphoria, and the silencing and cancelling of God in the public square. Satan is waging war on God’s people with the same temptations he lured Adam and Eve and used against Jesus in the desert leading us to sin. Do our sins cry out “crucify him”? Lent is our invitation to turn back from our sins to the path of righteousness.
Even as the world tries to silence God the stones cry out for mercy, justice, peace, and love. These stones have the word of God engraved not to stone people to death but to liberate them from sin. These stones are to cornerstones of the church, the canon of scripture, the sacraments, the magisterium of the church, and the people of God. Stony hearts not to strike Jesus with our sins but to strengthen our resolve and pass over the power of darkness. We pray that we may not undergo the test but if it should come then in the name of Jesus, we will claim our victory.
This day we have been given “a well-trained tongue” to speak the word of faith, hope and love to the weary from all that comes about from a culture of death. When will the Lord answer us in our time of need? The Lord answered us at the cross and we are not disgraced. The discipline of Lent is that we may have a well-trained mind, body, and soul to carry our own cross and set our face like “flint” without fear of persecution. The Lord took the form of a slave knowing that we may be taken as slaves in times of persecution by a world that seeks to cancel God denying us our freedom of religion to proclaim our faith, practice what we believe and “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”.
From the time of the early church and the Roman Empire to this day the church, that is the people of God have suffered the cross but a “well-trained tongue” gains the wisdom of how to respond to the enemy. We respond with prayer, thanksgiving, and praise for the mighty things God is doing in us and through us even as we carry our cross and especially because we dared to lift the cross of Jesus as Simon of Cyrene did. We dare to lift the cross of the Lord’s Passion for others who are suffering the horrors of war, poverty, homelessness, violence, disease, and death on the streets. In memory of our Lord, we lift up the cross and follow him.
In memory of the Lord’s Passion, we receive the bread and wine of the “new covenant’” of his body and blood broken and shed for us. The Lord said to his disciples “I confer a kingdom on you”? Where is this kingdom? The kingdom comes through Jesus in the Eucharist and the Eucharist through the Church to fulfill “that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom”. The kingdom is at hand and the kingdom is with us when we gather together to eat and drink of this covenant, we carry the kingdom with us. This is our inheritance not to be hidden but to be multiplied.
Scripture was fulfilled in Jesus not as an ending of all things prophesied but as the beginning of the kingdom so that the word made flesh may also be made flesh in us. Are we the living word of God doing even greater things in his name? It is too tempting to simply look upon Jesus on the cross as a love of his sacrifice and not be willing to enter into the sacrifice ourselves. Lent is calling us to fasting, penance, and almsgiving as the way into the sacrifice of the Lord as flesh of his flesh. We cannot say “Praise God” for his sacrifice and not accept the cross ourselves. We must discern the will of God pray “may this cup pass me by but let it be done according to your will”. May the Lord’s Passion make all things new in us when we enter into his Passion.
When we celebrate the New Year, we traditionally make a New Year’s resolution. Our resolutions are all about us, losing weight, exercising more, having more time to ourselves, meeting our pleasures. When we begin Lent, we also make a resolution for the season but this time it is for us to make it all about him, our prayer, penance, and almsgiving for him. A Lenten resolution should unite us more to Jesus, to each other, and to the Church. Lent is to bring truth, goodness, unity, and beauty into our lives. In making a sacrifice for him it is in giving that we receive the graces and blessings he desires to pour into us. What we do for him he multiplies for us because God is love and his love is everlasting.
The early Christians understood well the call of discipleship was a call to sacrifice, a risk of persecution, and the danger of death itself. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his disciples he sent them to proclaim the word without “a money bag or sack, or sandals…But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one.” What is happening now? Is Jesus calling his disciples to prepare for battle? Yes, but not the battle to defend him against the Pharisees or Romans but to defend the faith in a spiritual battle for their souls beginning by the attack on the flesh. The sword is the word of God we purchase with the blood of the lamb in the giving of ourselves to the one who has purchased us for himself.
The battle is on for our souls and Jesus prayed “that your own faith may not fail” for “Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat”. Satan having lost the war over death is left to battle only for souls and sift out the weak, the lukewarm, untrained for spiritual battle. We are weak when we trust in ourselves before we come to trust in the Lord. We are lukewarm when we compromise the teaching of the church for the teaching of the world choosing a culture of death over life. Most of all we have an untrained soul for spiritual battle when we follow the minimalist path to be called Christian by title and not by the practice and discipline of the faith. Satan does not know our thoughts but he clearly sees our actions and judges us and our vulnerabilities to know from where to attack.
As Lent comes to an end and we enter into the Easter season we ask ourselves “am I prepared to die for him or to deny him?” Have I entered into the Lord’s Passion this Lent and offered myself up to him that the works of our day may be multiplied by grace as a sacrifice of love? Peter thought he was prepared to die for Jesus until the moment of truth revealed the reality of his soul. Jesus said, “Pray that you may not undergo the test”. Pray that the Father’s will be done in us. Pray that the hour of darkness will Passover us and the light of Jesus will come to carry us up into his kingdom. The Lord’s Passion is upon us.
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