The week begins with branches in our hands and the Passion on our lips. Palm Sunday asks us to hold triumph and tragedy together without rushing past either one. Matthew shows a city “shaken” by a meek king on a borrowed donkey (Matthew 21:10), and the same Gospel leads us into Gethsemane, the tribunal, the flogging post, and the hill of the Skull. Between those scenes lies the mystery that orders all Christian life: Christ Jesus “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:7).
The King We Don’t Expect
“Behold, your king comes to you, meek and riding on an ass” (cf. Matthew 21:5). The Messiah does not storm the city on a warhorse. He arrives in vulnerability and poverty. He borrows a colt, an upstairs room, and; by evening of Friday; a tomb. The One through whom all things were made chooses to need what is not his.
That odd sentence at the start; “The master has need of them” (Matthew 21:3); should linger. The Lord wills to do his saving work through small, available things: a beast of burden, common bread and wine, the courage of a bystander from Cyrene, the open tomb of a quiet disciple. Holiness usually enters history on the ordinary.
In a culture that prizes scale, speed, and spectacle, Palm Sunday teaches how God reigns: not by coercion but by self-giving. We start Holy Week, then, not by upgrading our power but by consenting to love in small, available ways. Let the King be the King on his terms.
A Well-Trained Tongue and a Flint-like Face
Isaiah’s Servant says God has given him “a well-trained tongue” to “speak to the weary a word that will rouse them,” and also the courage to give “my back to those who beat me” (Isaiah 50:4–6). Christian speech, in this week especially, is meant to rouse the weary, not to win arguments. And Christian resolve sets its “face like flint” (50:7) not against our enemies, but against our refusal to love them.
The Passion names the temptations that erode this resolve. Judas trades the Teacher for silver and then despairs. Peter boasts and then buckles. Pilate outsources conscience to the crowd and its noise. The priests manipulate narratives. The soldiers amuse themselves with pain. None of it is exotic. It is the anatomy of ordinary sin; fear, vanity, utility, fatigue; when God’s will becomes costly.
“My God, My God”: Learning Jesus’ Prayer
The Psalm placed on our tongues today is the one Jesus prays from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Psalm 22:2; Matthew 27:46). He does not hide his desolation. He brings it into prayer.
Psalm 22 begins in forsakenness and ends in praise. Between those poles the psalmist names everything; mockery, pierced hands and feet, the casting of lots; until, at last, he promises to “proclaim [God’s] name to my brethren” (22:23). To pray like Jesus is to bring the whole truth before the Father: grief without pretense, hope without denial. In a season when many feel isolated or disoriented, this is not a failure of faith. It is the sound of faith grieving truthfully in God’s presence.
The Choice of Barabbas
The crowd that once cried “Hosanna” chooses Barabbas (Matthew 27:20–21). Barabbas represents the familiar shortcut: force, control, a quick fix. Compared with a silent, scourged man who refuses to save himself, he looks practical.
Modern life repeats this choice whenever we prefer domination over mercy, expediency over truth, image over integrity. “Washing our hands” after we’ve abdicated responsibility remains an old temptation with new technologies. But the Gospel insists: handing over the Innocent is never neutral. When we choose control at the expense of love, we do not secure ourselves; we hollow ourselves out.
The astonishing counterpoint is that the very blood we shed becomes our salvation. “This is my blood of the covenant … poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). The cry in the square; “His blood be upon us and upon our children!” (27:25); reads, in the light of Easter, not as a warrant for blame but as a prophecy of mercy. The Cross exposes how all humanity participates in sin; the Cross also reveals how God answers our guilt; with a life poured out for our healing.
Gethsemane and the Human Will
In the garden, Jesus prays the sentence every disciple must learn: “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). This is not resignation; it is trust. Love does not erase the cup; love drinks it. The Father is not a rival to our flourishing. In consenting to the Father’s will, Jesus shows that obedience is the form love takes when it is crucified by the world’s refusal.
The disciples sleep. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (26:41). This is neither an insult nor an excuse. It is clarity. Our vocation is to keep watch with the One who keeps watch with us. Vigil is simply love refusing to look away.
The Veil Tears
At the moment of death, “the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). The barrier between God’s holiness and humanity’s woundedness is not negotiated; it is removed by God. Access is opened, not earned. The earthquake, the split rocks, the opened tombs; creation recognizes its Lord in death. The centurion recognizes him too: “Truly, this was the Son of God!” (27:54). Confession begins when we see that the Cross is not God failing to act, but God acting in the only way that can finally save us; by entering our death with a love stronger than death.
The Quiet Faithful
The Passion lingers on seemingly secondary figures: Simon of Cyrene, pressed into service; Joseph of Arimathea, who risks reputation to bury a condemned man; the women who followed and ministered, who remain when others flee, and who will be first to hear Easter. Palm Sunday honors these quiet fidelities. Much of the kingdom is carried forward by people who did not set out to be heroic; the caregiver up late into the night, the friend who shows up at a hospital, the neighbor who makes a meal and doesn’t announce it. They do not solve Golgotha. They refuse to leave Love alone there.
Kenosis in a Restless World
“Though he was in the form of God… he emptied himself” (Philippians 2:6–7). Kenosis is not self-contempt; it is self-donation. The eternal Son bends low, not because he is less than the Father, but because this is how God is: an eternal outpouring. Power, in God, is not the capacity to dominate but the freedom to give. To become Christian, then, is to learn this pattern; pouring ourselves out in truth for the good of others, and receiving our life back from the Father.
Applied to contemporary life, kenosis might look like:
- Telling the truth when a convenient lie would protect you.
- Refusing contempt, even for those who traffic in it.
- Returning time to God by keeping silence rather than letting noise colonize every hour.
- Reconciling first instead of waiting to be approached.
- Choosing presence over performance: being with the suffering rather than explaining them.
How to Keep Watch This Week
Holy Week is not something to admire from a distance. It is the Church’s school of love. A few concrete ways to enter it:
- Read the Passion in Matthew 26–27 slowly, aloud, pausing where the text resists you. Let one scene accompany your week.
- Pray Psalm 22 with Jesus, ending in praise even if your feelings have not yet arrived there.
- Make time for the Triduum liturgies if possible; clear your calendar as you would for a beloved’s final hours and first morning.
- Choose one act of costly reconciliation: a confession made, a debt forgiven, a call returned, a bitterness surrendered.
- Keep a short vigil. Put the phone away. Sit in quiet for thirty minutes one evening and simply say, “Here I am.”
- Seek someone on the margins of your attention: the isolated neighbor, the colleague under pressure, the friend carrying grief. Be Simon for a mile.
The palms we carry will dry out over the year; they will become next year’s ashes. That is not bleak. It is the pattern of grace: our fragile praise, purified by time, becomes the sign of repentance that opens Lent anew. Today’s “Hosanna” and Friday’s “Crucify” are not meant to shame us but to convert us; to teach us to praise with a truer heart.
Waiting Beside the Tomb
Joseph rolls the stone. The women sit, “facing the tomb” (Matthew 27:61). Waiting becomes worship. The world prefers outcomes; Holy Week insists on presence. If we remain with him in this hour; if we let his self-emptying love re-teach our instincts; then the torn veil and the opened earth will not merely be events in a book. They will be the new creation starting in us.
For now, we keep watch. The Name above every name was spoken over a mocked, crucified man. Bend the knee there. And let that posture re-shape everything.