Today is Palm Sunday. Catholics today will process into Mass palms in hand, listening to St. Luke’s account of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We will hear how as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, people spread their cloaks on the road and “began to praise God aloud with joy.”
It is almost jarring to hear the crowds proclaim, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” Jarring because we know the rest of the story.
And since we know what will shortly follow that scene, we have to ask ourselves, how did the crowd turn so quickly from “Blessed is he” to “Crucify him”? How could the same people who proclaimed the first demand the second?
It is not just an interesting historical question. It is not just about those people on those two days. Don’t we really do the same? Praise God in one moment and, by our words and deeds, reject him in the next.
I posted once before this song by Danielle Rose. It is a good one to help us think about the ways in which we do exactly as the crowds did who turned against Jesus.
Update: At the Mass I attended this evening at my sister’s church, the priest asked us to remember that Jesus was aware of our fickleness – our ability to move from praise to condemnation to indifference – and went through his part in his father’s plan anyway.
Creo en Dios! 