Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR B PASSION SUNDAY - 13.4.03 Is 50,4-7; Phil 2,6-11; Mk 14,1-15,47
A King: acclaimed & killed
Mark’s
Passion Story.
Celebrating the last week of Jesus’ life, the Liturgy follows the sequel of
events from Mark’s Gospel, who in essence, says that Jesus, -for three years-
preached God’s Kingdom everywhere, and only at the end went to Jerusalem.
There he lasted one week: in one week he was acclaimed and anointed as
Messiah-King; then he was arrested and tried. He was convicted and condemned,
first by the Jewish authorities -and to them, Jesus proclaimed to be the
Messiah-King & Son of the Blessed One; and then by the Roman authorities
-and by them Jesus was: scourged & crowned with thorns as a Mocked King -
crucified as “King of the Jews” - and finally buried as a king. While such
horrendous tragedy unfolds, Mark presents the conflict between good and evil as
it confronts us everywhere in life and in history. Amazingly, everyone fails to
understand what’s going on: the disciples fail, the Authorities fail and so do
the women: disciples, crowd, opponents, Torah-Teachers, priests, civil
authorities: they were all expecting a political Messiah. Even as Jesus is dying
on the cross, people misunderstand; and as Jesus
cries out: ‘Eloi, Eloi lama sabactani, -words which mean- my God my God
why have you abandoned me’, people exchange the word Eloi for Elijah. In their
popular belief they expected Elijah to come and escort the Messiah into his
mission. So they still give Jesus a chance to prove that after all he is the
claimed Messiah . Instead Jesus was
praying and the words he prayed, make the first line of a famous Messianic Psalm
21, which talks about how badly the
Messiah would be treated and which we sing as today’s Responsorial Psalm. Mark
closes his gospel with a sad story: after Sabbath, the women go to the tomb to
anoint Jesus’ body; they see the stone rolled back & a young man tells
them that Jesus is risen as he promised and will see the disciples in Galilee;
they were alarmed & went away, fleeing from the tomb; terror & amazement
had seized them, & they said nothing to no one, ‘for they were fearful’.
No one had understood anything. A
mystery of misunderstanding: why does Mark describe the last week of Jesus’ life
(his saving death & resurrection) in such a symbolic and even negative way?
The answer is hidden in Mark’s astute teaching skill. He knows that we,
readers of his time and ours, may treat Christ’s death & resurrection as
something that happened then, a thing we can simply condemn & dismiss. If
that is the case we have not dealt with the evil which is in our life. No matter
who we are, and when we appear in history, we are confronted by it . Sooner or
later, we are faced with tragic events which baffle us. Constantly we fail to
understand what God is saying to us through these events. Indeed even when we
pray, we tend to remind God that he must do what we ask or else; as if we would
accept no other alternative to our predicament. The story of Jesus in Mark is an
invitation to see how God’s will -as it was foretold by the prophets-, is
indeed unfolding. When tragedy strikes, none of us understands anything; only
later we come to discern God’, through prayerful reflection and hindsight.
What happened to Jesus is not something distant and unreal, that has nothing to
do with our day do day tribulations and suffering. Pain, any kind of pain, is
never too far away. It will always burden and overwhelm us. Perhaps through
faith, and close to Our Lord, we can develop a sense of courage, and achieve
inner healing. Mark invites us to see ourselves in God’s hands; and when pain
hits, we can radiate healing to us and others. Faith includes both doubt and
trust in God, the opposite of arrogance. ______________________________________ |
