Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
While all generalities fall short in describing the reality of the world, we can say with decent accuracy, that there are two types of people in this world: those who fill up for gas when they’re around half a tank, and those who try to get that needle as close to E as possible before getting gas. Being the cautious guy that I am, I usually try to fill up my Malibu when I have about half of a tank left. But, when it comes to our life in Christ, we should mimic those who, more often than not, are running on empty.
There are so many messages that God wants to communicate to us as we enter Holy Week this year. There are so many themes that I could preach on as we begin our pilgrimage from the triumphant entry, into which we entered at the beginning of Mass, to the Last Supper, which we enter into on Holy Thursday evening, to Calvary, in which we participate on Good Friday at the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, to the empty tomb, proclaimed to the world at Easter. But today, I want us to examine how God emptied Himself.
St. Paul uses that exact phrase, “emptied himself,” in our second reading today. In this beautiful hymn which focuses on the divine kenosis, which is a Greek word which means “emptying,” St. Paul reminds us that, “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,…[and] humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Jesus, the full revelation of the God the Father, runs on empty as He saves the world. He leaves nothing in the tank, but abandons Himself fully to the will of God. And in this emptying, in this kenosis, God the Father exalts Jesus and glorifies Him.
If we were to read the chapters of the Gospels that cover the time of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem through the crucifixion, we would not find Jesus holding anything back. He accepts the praise of the people, who acclaim Him as the Messiah; He cleanses the temple; he fights back every verbal tussle with the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees; He washes His apostles’ feet as He calls them to serve; He gives His very Body and Blood for His Apostles at the Last Supper; He gives so much of His strength that He begins to sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane; He takes the mockery and cruelty of the trials before the chief priest and Pontius Pilate; He gives His last breath on the cross, and even the blood and water that filled His sacred Body are shed for our salvation. And this is why God exalts Jesus: because He holds nothing back for the good of His people. And this is why God will exalt us: if we hold nothing back from God.
This is one of the many paradoxes of Christianity. It is only by giving ourselves away that we can gain what is most lasting. It is only by emptying ourselves that we can truly be full. Vatican II, in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, entitled Gaudium et spes, says it this way: “…man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”
