The Pope on Palm Sunday: ask for the grace of astonishment

On this day, “let us ask for the grace of amazement”. It was the exhortation of Pope Francis in his homily at Mass to commemorate the entry of the Lord Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Today’s liturgy, the Pope began by saying “every year arouses in us a feeling of astonishment”, because “we pass from the joy of welcoming Jesus who enters Jerusalem, to the pain of seeing him condemned. to death”. It is a feeling “which will accompany us throughout Holy Week”.

You have to go from admiration to amazement

Recalling the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, on a humble donkey, as the people solemnly awaited Easter “for the mighty liberator” and celebrated the victory over the Romans “with the sword”, Francis raised a question: “What has it happened to those people, who in a matter of days went from greeting Jesus with hosannas to shouting “crucify him”? ”And explained:

In reality, these people followed an image of the Messiah more than the real Messiah. They admired Jesus, but did not want to be surprised by him. Astonishment is different from simple awe. Admiration can be worldly, because it seeks the tastes and expectations of each; on the contrary, astonishment remains open to the other, to his novelty.

The Pope underlined that even today many people admire Jesus, but nevertheless “their life does not change”. Because “to admire Jesus is not enough”, but one must “follow his path, allow oneself to be questioned by him, pass from admiration to astonishment”. What is most surprising in the Lord and his Passover, affirms the Sovereign Pontiff, is “the fact that he reaches glory by the way of humiliation”.

He triumphs by welcoming pain and death, which we, hostages of admiration and success, would avoid. […] It is surprising to see the Almighty reduced to nothing. See Him, the all-knowing Word, teach us in silence from the chair of the cross. See the king of kings whose throne is a gallows. See the God of the universe stripped of everything. See him crowned with thorns and not with glory. See him, goodness in person, being insulted and trampled on.

Jesus ascended the cross to descend in our suffering

The Lord humbled himself for us, “to touch the most intimate of our human reality, to experience all of our existence, all of our evil,” Francisco explained. He climbed the cross to descend into our sufferings, testing our worst moods: failure, rejection of all, betrayal of those who love him, and even abandonment of God. Experiencing our most painful contradictions in his own flesh, he redeemed and transformed them:

His love is close to our fragility, it reaches where we are most ashamed. And now we know we are not alone. God is with us in every wound, in every fear. No evil, no sin has the last word. God wins, but the palm of victory passes through the tree of the cross. This is why the palms and the cross are together.

Raise our gaze to the cross

Christian life, said the Pope, “without astonishment, is monotonous”, because, if faith “loses its capacity to surprise itself, it remains deaf”: it does not feel the wonder of grace, it does not know either. the taste of the Bread of life and of the Word, and does not perceive the beauty of the brothers and the gift of creation, and has no other means than to take refuge in legalisms, clericalisms and all those things that Jesus condemns in Matthew chapter 23. Hence the invitation of the Holy Father that, this Holy Week, “we look up to the cross to receive the grace of amazement”.

Saint Francis of Assisi, looking at the Crucified, was astonished that his brothers did not cry. And we, are we still able to let ourselves be moved by the love of God? Why have we lost the ability to marvel at him? Perhaps because our faith has been corroded by habit. Perhaps because we remain locked in our regrets and let ourselves be paralyzed by our frustrations. Maybe because we have lost confidence in everything and even believe that we are failures. But behind all these “maybe” is the fact that we have not opened ourselves to the gift of the Spirit, which is the One who gives us the grace of amazement.

To open oneself to the gift of the Spirit who gives us the grace of astonishment and “to start afresh from astonishment” is therefore the exhortation of the Holy Father: look at the Crucified and tell him “Lord, how much you are to me. How precious I am to you! “Let yourself be surprised by Jesus” to relive, because the greatness of life is not to be or to affirm oneself, but to discover oneself loved. “” The greatness of life is precisely in the beauty of love. “

In the Crucified, we see God humbled, the Almighty reduced to booty. And with the grace of amazement, we understand that by welcoming those who are rejected, by drawing closer to those who are humbled by life, we love Jesus. Because He is in the last, in the rejected, in those that our Pharisee culture condemns.

Before the cross there is no room for misinterpretation

The Sovereign Pontiff concluded his homily by evoking the “most beautiful” scene of astonishment that today’s Gospel shows us: that of the centurion who, seeing Jesus expire, exclaims: “In reality, this man was the Son of God! ”. The centurion, said the Pope, was astonished by love: he saw Jesus die “loving” and that astonished him. He was in pain, he was exhausted, but he still loved.

It is astonishment before God, who knows how to fill even the moment of death with love. In this free and unprecedented love, the centurion, a pagan, meets God. This man was truly the Son of God! His sentence confirms the passion.

Many others before the centurion had recognized Jesus as the Son of God. But, nevertheless, “Christ himself had ordered them to be silent, for there was the risk of remaining in the admiration of the world, in the idea of ​​a God to be worshiped and feared as powerful and terrible”. Now, before the cross, “there is no room for erroneous interpretations”, because “God has revealed himself and only reigns with the unarmed and disarming force of love”. Hence the final exhortation of the Supreme Pontiff who, specifying that God “continues to surprise our minds and our hearts”, encourages us to let “amazement invade us”: