Passion Sunday will set the stage for the final showdown between Jesus and his detractors. This Holy Week, the whole Christian world comes together to commemorate the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This is the fulfillment of his mission, and the fruition of the task that the Father had sent him to do. Everything Jesus had done so far, every word, every action, every miracle, had been building up to the climactic events of this coming week. All the players are now in place, all the elements of the play are now ready, and Jesus enters into his passion after a life of faithful service to his Father and to the people whom he loved.
The final scene in Jesus’ life appears to the whole world as a scene of tragedy, a failure of tremendous proportions. Here was a man who did nothing but good, who spoke only of peace, who cared only that the will of God be done. And he was to end his life in the most cruel and humiliating way – crucifixion, at the hands of the very humanity he was sent to redeem. In the eyes of the world, which calculates its investments in terms of the returns it will get, Jesus has to be judged a failure, his mission futile, his words, fallen on deaf ears, his death the final judgment of a failed and wasted life.
Passion Sunday begins Holy Week on this sad note. It sets the tone for the somber days ahead. But there is inserted into this sadness an unmistakable element of triumph. For we all know that the play doesn’t end with the crucifixion and death of Jesus on the cross, at the hands of those who rejected him. We know that death would not be the final word and that after the agony of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday, will come the glory and triumph of Easter, when the very life of Jesus will find vindication in the hands of his Father, who will give him the greatest reward of all by raising him from the dead and destroying death forever. The life of Jesus, his works and his deeds, did not happen in vain. As Pope Benedict XVI has reminded us: “Dear brothers and sisters, the Paschal Mystery which the Holy Triduum enables us to relive is not only the memory of a past reality; it is also a reality in our time. Christ also conquers sin and death today with his love. Evil in all its forms does not have the last word. The final triumph, the triumph of truth and love, is Christ's!”
Let us enter into Holy Week 2008 and truly celebrate that triumph with faith, love and joy.
