The Sunday of the Passion:  Palm Sunday

March 15, 2008

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church
1013 Wood Street
Scranton, PA
 

Matthew 26 and 27

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen

            To live in America is to live amidst contradictions.  On the one hand, our founding document states that all men are created equal and that we are endowed with inalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rights that are inalienable because they are given to us not by the state, but by our Creator.  At the same time, we all know from our childhood history lessons that the man who penned these very words owned slaves and even took one of them as his concubine.  Thus, we see that in American we often have high ideals, so that we desire to be like Jesus, yet we have low expectations for ourselves and we often go out and behave like the mob.  What we believe as a people frequently is not reflected in what we do.

            St. Matthew’s account of the Passion that we just heard contrasts the innocence of Jesus, which we often desire, with the viciousness of the mob, which we often embody through our actions.  This morning I will point out several characteristics of the mob which apply in every age, while contrasting them with what it takes to be a faithful disciple, at once both innocent and willing to suffer on behalf of the guilty.

            The first thing we learn about the mob is how fickle it is.  Remember that our Mass today began with that portion of St. Matthew’s Gospel that records how Jesus was lauded by the crowds upon His entry into Jerusalem.  They treated Him like a king and said things about Him that would indicate He was more than a king, more akin to their savior.

            The Passion we just heard took place just five days later.  And the crowd, the mob, no longer lauded Him as king and savior, but as one deserving of an immediate execution.  What happened in the meantime?  Jesus made clear that He would not fulfill the mob’s expectations for Him, that He would not be the sort of king they wanted.  So, although He had done nothing wrong, which even the wicked Pontius Pilate recognized, the mob in its fickleness, begged for Jesus’ death, the same man of whom they had said on Sunday, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

            This mob-like fickleness was on display in America just this past week.  Everyone who has not been living in a cave knows that the governor of New York resigned after it was revealed by the F. B. I. that he has been consorting with prostitutes.  This is the same man who was elected by the people of New York just sixteen months ago, by an unprecedented margin.  On Monday he will be a private citizen.  What happened?  Did Eliot Spitzer change?  Of course not.  He’s the same arrogant fool that tried to shut down the crisis pregnancy clinics in New York City while Attorney General for the state of New York.  And the voters knew that about him when they elected him.  But the mob is fickle.  What they were willing to accept sixteen months ago, they no longer are.  And what do we learn?  Only this:  give the mob what it wants, or it will hate you, whether you deserve to be hated or not.

            The second thing we learn about the mob is that it demands proof of innocence, rather than proof of guilt.  Though Jesus was innocent, the crowd demanded he be killed and that a guilty murderer be freed.  To add insult to injury, after Jesus was hanging on the cross, the crowd asked Him to prove His innocence by getting down on His own!  This, for them, would have been sufficient proof to know they should not have crucified Him in the first place.

            This way of doing things flies in the face of reason.  If we are not sure that someone is guilty, the default position should always be to let the suspect live until at least his guilt has been ascertained.  Yet for the mob, it makes sense to kill first and ask questions later.  And for thirty-five years, that has been happening in America.  When abortion was first legalized in this country, it was defended with the assertion that we cannot be sure that the fetus is a human life.  To this day, our laws make a distinction between the baby who has been born, who is deemed a person, and the baby who has not been born, who is deemed not to be a person and who thus has no rights, not even the right to life.  The kill first and ask questions later orientation is alive and well here in America.  Mob rule is the law of the land, and until the unborn babies themselves can prove they are people, the killing will likely continue.  Certainly, the mob will continue to assent to their deaths.

            The third thing we know about the mob is that it is passionate.  At Jesus’ mockery of a trial, the crowd presented no evidence to Pilate, only their demand that He be killed. And to seal the deal, because they were so passionate about their cause, they said something completely irrational and unjust.  In response to Pilate’s protestations and reservations about Jesus’ innocence, they exclaimed, “His blood be on us and on our children.”  That is, the guilty were willing to make the innocent complicit in shedding innocent blood, so passionate were they for the cause of death.  Their passion was so strong they did not care if it hurt their children.

            This is too often the case even today, is it not?  Though over and over again divorce is shown to be detrimental to children, fifty percent of marriages still end in divorce.  Though single parenthood has been shown over and over again to hurt children, still thirty-four percent of all American children are born to unwed mothers.  Because of our passions, we eschew faithfulness and responsibility and, as a result, our children suffer.  I ask you, was anyone really surprised to learn that Eliot Spitzer’s twenty-two year old consort was from a broken home?  Nobody was surprised, because we know that the passions of the mob do not care about the lives of the innocent.

            How then do we counter the fickleness, the injustice and passion of the mob?  We follow the examples of three individuals who stood apart from the mob.

            St. Matthew tells us that Mary Magdalene stood watching Christ’s crucifixion from afar.  What she did was separate herself from the mob by being faithful to Jesus both at the beginning of the week and at the end.  The best way to separate ourselves from the mob is to be like Mary Magdalene, to be faithful to Jesus Christ in good times and in bad, when they like Jesus and when they do not.  Where the mob is fickle, we are consistent, making our fidelity to the Way, the Truth, and the Life known even as others scream to destroy Him and His Church.

            St. Matthew also names Simon of Cyrene, the man the Roman soldiers forced to carry Jesus’ cross.  While the mob ridiculed Jesus, striking the innocent and increasing His burden, Simon of Cyrene made a sacrifice on behalf of Jesus by making his suffering that much easier to bear.  To distinguish ourselves from the mob, we must make sacrifices on behalf of the innocent to redress the injustices they suffer.  Simon did not ask Jesus to prove His innocence.  He saw a suffering man and helped him.

            Finally, St. Matthew tells us of a man named Joseph of Aramethea.  When all the other disciples had run away, unable to control their passionate fear, Joseph made sure Jesus received a decent burial.  Joseph’s passions were not stronger than his principles, and to distinguish himself from the mob, he was willing to enter the lion’s den to recover the body of a dead man, because even dead men deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, to be treated according to principle, not passion.

            Our responsibility as Catholics, then, is to remind our countrymen that we are called not only to have ideals but also to live up to them.  This means that like Jesus, we can expect to suffer in our fidelity to the Truth.  You may have heard that the body of the Archbishop of Mosul was found this past week.  He was kidnapped by terrorists two weeks ago.  Even as his Iraqi countrymen slaughtered each other, and tens of thousands of them fled, Archbishop Paulus Rahho stayed put as a witness to the sanctity of innocent human life.  It cost him his life, but such a sacrifice was possible for this faithful Catholic because the Passion we heard today is not the end. The Resurrection is!