On Palm Sunday we are presented with two Gospels. The chief one is the Passion according to Matthew but before that we have the Gospel of the Entry into Jerusalem. This Gospel of the Entry is an invitation to each one of us to make once again, our entry into the events of Holy Week.
These events have been familiar to us all our lives — each element, each character, each anecdote is known to us. At the same time, the story is also always new simply because we are different with the passing of another year. We listen to the whole retelling of the last week of Jesus’ life not as some dutiful way of remembering, but as a vital and effective bringing into the present the great events that give us new life in Christ.
All the world religions are asked the same central question – what is the meaning of suffering? How are human beings meant to cope with suffering, and its ultimate expression, death? The identity of Jesus being revealed in Matthew’s Gospel is that of the Messiah and the Son of God, not with a display of human power, but as one who was prepared to suffer unto death to show us how our God loves us. In a sense He learned how to do this by undergoing these realities himself. Jesus gives us an example of patient endurance and faithfulness in suffering that models the way we must greet our own Good Fridays and so follow Him into the wonder of Easter Dawn.
This is our moment of Redemption – a transformation and a change from defeat to triumph, from fear to courage, from self-pity to generosity, from terror to love, from death to life. Jesus models this for us and enables each one, by God’s grace, to grow in love, even in the face of inevitable suffering and death.