Pope
Francis: Palm Sunday homily
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis delivered the homily at Mass in St.
Peter's Square on Sunday - Palm Sunday - the beginning of Holy Week, 2015.
Please find, below, the official English translation of the Holy Father's
prepared remarks.
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At the heart of this celebration, which seems so festive, are
the words we heard in the hymn of the Letter to the Philippians: “He
humbled himself”(2:8). Jesus’ humiliation.
These words show us God’s way and the way of Christians:
it is humility. A way which constantly amazes and disturbs us: we will
never get used to a humble God!
Humility is above all God’s way: God humbles himself to
walk with his people, to put up with their infidelity. This is clear
when we read the Book of Exodus. How humiliating for the Lord to hear all
that grumbling, all those complaints against Moses, but ultimately against him,
their Father, who brought them out of slavery and was leading them on the
journey through the desert to the land of freedom.
This week, Holy Week, which leads us to Easter, we will
take this path of Jesus’ own humiliation. Only in this way will
this week be “holy” for us too!
We will feel the contempt of the leaders of his people and their
attempts to trip him up. We will be there at the betrayal of Judas, one
of the Twelve, who will sell him for thirty pieces of silver. We will see
the Lord arrested and carried off like a criminal; abandoned by his disciples,
dragged before the Sanhedrin, condemned to death, beaten and insulted. We
will hear Peter, the “rock” among the disciples, deny him three times. We
will hear the shouts of the crowd, egged on by their leaders, who demand that
Barabas be freed and Jesus crucified. We will see him mocked by the
soldiers, robed in purple and crowned with thorns. And then, as he makes
his sorrowful way beneath the cross, we will hear the jeering of the people and
their leaders, who scoff at his being King and Son of God.
This is God’s way, the way of humility. It is the way
of Jesus; there is no other. And there can be no humility without
humiliation.
Following this path to the full, the Son of God took on the “form
of a slave” (cf.Phil 2:7). In the end, humility
means service. It means making room for God by stripping oneself,
“emptying oneself”, as Scripture says (v. 7). This is the
greatest humiliation of all.
There is another way, however, opposed to the way of
Christ. It is worldliness, the way of the world. The world proposes
the way of vanity, pride, success… the other way. The Evil One
proposed this way to Jesus too, during his forty days in the desert. But
Jesus immediately rejected it. With him, we too can overcome this
temptation, not only at significant moments, but in daily life as well.
In this, we are helped and comforted by the example of so many
men and women who, in silence and hiddenness, sacrifice themselves daily to
serve others: a sick relative, an elderly person living alone, a disabled
person…
We think too of the humiliation endured by all those who, for
their lives of fidelity to the Gospel, encounter discrimination and pay a
personal price. We think too of our brothers and sisters who are
persecuted because they are Christians, the martyrs of our own time.
They refuse to deny Jesus and they endure insult and injury with dignity.
They follow him on his way. We can speak of a “cloud of witnesses” (cf. Heb 12:1).
Let us set about with determination along this same path, with
immense love for him, our Lord and Saviour. Love will guide us
and give us strength. For where he is, we too shall be (cf. Jn 12:26).
Amen.
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