2010-03-28 - Palm Sunday

As Christ moved day by day toward the Cross, the Palm Sunday crowds thinned out. So it is in every generation when the Holy Church takes stands inhospitable to the regnant conceits of the age. There were no fair-weather friends on Calvary. By tracing our Savior’s footsteps in this Holy Week, we sign up with Him and against His foes. Some crucified Him out of ignorance and others out of malice, but the motives did not mitigate the suffering.

     Since the Passion was the mystery of God’s love beyond human comprehension, Jesus said from the Cross that even those who acted viciously for their own ends did not know what they were doing. And there were those who, like the daydreams of Adam, would try to make themselves God, in an exercise of what Newman called “those giants, the passion and pride of man.”

     Christ was crucified by some who invoked religion to justify themselves. It was not like the politician who recently said she was praying to St. Joseph to pass a healthcare bill that the Catholic bishops have said violates the sanctity of life and the freedom of conscience. That legislation is the most recent reminder that the Passion of Christ, victorious once and for all, is nonetheless relived in every spiritual struggle. This is why Pascal said that Christ is in agony until the end of the world. He said that because Christ Himself said: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40).

     Pontius Pilate and Herod struck a deal so that Christ might die. By their very compromise, they “became friends with each other that very day” (Luke 23:12). Christ did not bring them together, their rejection of Christ did. Any legislation that denies Constitutional rights will be subject to judicial review, and the present health bill, which will impose an estimated half a trillion dollars in new taxes, will be answerable in the next election, but any legislation that achieves its ends by canceling Christ out of the social equation will be answerable to a loftier judgment. Pilot and Herod claimed they were acting for the good of the people. Pilate seems to have acted out of a lack of wisdom, and Herod out of a lack of intelligence. The compromise they reached was the alchemy of disaster. Likewise, those in our day who think that the promise of an executive order will prevent taxpayer funding of abortion are sadly mistaken. They may think they have secured “peace for our time,” and may even say to their friends, as Chamberlain told the British people in 1938: “And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.” And, whether naïve or dense, they will give thanks that Poland was never invaded, and  unborn life is safe.