PASSION (PALM) SUNDAY (B) 01-04-2012

PASSION (PALM) SUNDAY (B) 01-04-2012

Mark 14, 1-15,47

IDENTIFIED WITH THE VICTIMS

José Antonio Pagola

 Neither the power of Rome, nor the authorities of the Temple could put up with the newness of Jesus. The way he understood God and related to him was dangerous. He did not support the imperial rule of Tiberius, but called upon all to seek the kingdom of God and his justice. He didn’t need to think twice before breaking the Law of the Sabbath or religious traditions. He was only concerned about the suffering of the sick and malnourished people of Galilee.

Rev. Fr.Valentine de Souza S.J

 They did not forgive him for this. He identified himself too closely with the innocent victims of the Empire and those forgotten by the religion of the Temple. Mercilessly executed on a cross, God now reveals himself in him who is identified with the innocent victims of all times. To the cry of all of them is added God's cry of agony.

 
 The disfigured face of the crucified Jesus reveals to us an amazing God, one who shatters our conventional images of God and calls into question all religious practice that seeks to worship God forgetting the drama of a world that continues to crucify the weakest and the most helpless.

  If God has died identified with the victims, his crucifixion becomes a disquieting challenge for the followers of Jesus. We cannot separate God from the suffering of innocent people. We cannot worship the Crucified One, and turn our backs on the sufferings of so many human beings ground down by hunger, wars, or poverty.

 God continues to seek an answer from us for the crucified people of our times. We have no right to continue to be spectators of such immense suffering by feeding a naïve illusion of innocence. We have to rebel against the culture of insensibility that allows us to isolate ourselves from the crucified ones by displacing the unjust suffering in the world to a remote sphere where all outbursts, groans, or weeping get lost.

 We cannot enclose ourselves in our “welfare society”, ignoring that other “society of malaise” where millions of human beings are born to be obliterated within a few years from a life that was only death. It is neither human nor Christian to be ensconced in security forgetting those who only know a life of insecurity and danger.

  When we Christians raise our eyes to the face of Jesus crucified, we contemplate the unfathomable love of God, delivered up even unto death for our salvation. If we look more carefully, we soon discover in that face the faces of so many other crucified people who far from or near us, call for our love and compassion, our solidarity with them.

Help discover the crucified people of our times

English Translation by Valentine de Souza S.J. Mandal, Gujarat , India.394650

e-mail:vallydesouza@jesuits.net,
Jose Antonio Pagola, vgentza@euskalnet.net , San Sebastian, Guipuzcoa, Spain.