The image at the center of the Jesuit Center's Chapel Mosaic, this a rendering by Marsha Rowe.

  Homily for Palm Sunday and The Passion of Matthew 

       We learn from our scriptures that Jesus’ violent death, brought on by those who were envious and fearful, fulfilled the loving plan of our divine Creator.    Jesus’ violent death is God’s way  of entering completely into our humanity and also revealing that the grace of God is the full gift of reconciliation.

In the past, I often imagined that Jesus did not need to go through such suffering and humiliation in order to bring about our redemption.    The decision of God to come among us in the humanity of Jesus, the decision that brings about the Incarnation itself, is itself radical enough, it seemed to me.   The fact that God walks among us with a human nature seemed enough to bring about the salvation of the whole human race.   Jesus was free by my past thinking to die a natural death in his bed in the way that most of us die, without a violent execution, and without utter humiliation.   Such a Jesus of wisdom and grace and love could certainly save us.  Such a Jesus could still call us to the highest standards of love of God and neighbor.

But the testimony of the earliest friends of Jesus is perfectly clear.   We read today about the final days of Jesus.   Instead of dying in his bed surrounded by his friends, instead of leaving as a last image that of a wise and honored teacher, the human Jesus, under the inspiration of the Trinity, freely chooses the way of abandonment, of humiliation and of the cross, freely chooses a bloody and brutal shattering of the connection of human body and soul.   But let us consider that within the theology of Jesus’ death, the violence itself carries two gifts for us.

The first:  Jon Sobrino, the Latin American theologian who witnessed a lot of violence, gave us one reason for the choice that Jesus makes:  God is making a conscious choice for all of humanity.  By embracing the most degrading and brutal death, God shows the divine love for us as fully as is humanly and divinely possible.   Jesus shows his love and his solidarity not only for us who are likely to die in our beds but also, more pointedly for those tortured in prison, for those victims of genocide, for those who suffer persecution for the sake of what is right.   By embracing the most degrading and brutal death, God in Jesus Christ shows how our divine creator in creating us offers us compassion whatever our suffering.

         Secondly, Jesus also makes another statement about the love that he and our creator God have for us human beings.  He pronounces from the cross these words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke: 23-34).   The divinity of Jesus in some ways remains hidden as his body and soul are split one from the other.  But here, in Jesus’ complete gesture of forgiveness, the love of the divinity for all human beings, no matter their acts of evil, is overwhelmingly clear.   We write the words in huge letters:  “FATHER, FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.”  Jesus Christ dies brutally, his human body separates from his soul while his divinity remains hidden,  but still God is eager to recognize our ignorance and to forgive us.   Jesus longs for every human being to accept love and forgiveness.    It is in imitating him and dying to ourselves that we can show our acceptance of the divine mercy.   Jesus urges us to long for and work for that world where each of us can forgive others and be reconciled with one another.  On that day violence will vanish from the world.

       So yes as we enter this Holy Week, Jesus leads us in the bearing of our physical suffering, however severe.    And in the forgiveness, even of his murderers, he offers a way to the reconciliation that will end all violence.    May we eagerly accept his offer.