Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion (A)
At the Mass
Dear brothers and sisters,
They say the clothes make the man.[1] This is no less true of Jesus than it is for us. What do I mean by this?
We heard a moment ago how the Roman soldiers “stripped off [Jesus’] clothes and threw a scarlet military cloak about him” (Matthew 27:28). They did this, of course, in mockery of his claim to royal dignity, which had been subtle before but with his entrance into Jerusalem became unmistakable.
From our vantage point, we might well say the attempt of the soldiers to ridicule Jesus backfired. By stripping him of his everyday clothes and mantling him in scarlet, they inadvertently showed forth the reality both of his kingship and of his sacrificial victimhood, each of which originates in his divine love.
In the days of the Roman Empire, the scarlet cloak – called the saum – was worn as a symbol of imperial power. That cloak placed in outward jest around Jesus manifested his integral majesty. His kingship, however, is not one founded on earthly power, but on the authority of his love.
Matthias Storm, Christ Crowned with Thorns
Just as Jesus’ love
gives rise to his kingship, so does it give rise to sacrificial victimhood.
Similarly, as the scarlet cloak points to Jesus’ majesty, it also points to his
victimhood, his loving offering of himself to the Father to bring about our
redemption and salvation.
“The history of religions knows the figure of the mock king – related to the figure of the ‘scapegoat’.”[2] On the feast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Jewish High Priest was instructed by God to atone for the sins of the entire people:
Laying both hands on [the goat’s] head, he shall confess over it all the iniquities of the Israelites and their trespasses, and so put them on the goat’s head. He shall then have it led into the wilderness by an attendant. The goat will carry off their iniquities to an isolated region (Leviticus 16:21-22).
There is, though, an important aspect of the ceremonies involving the scapegoat that the Book of Leviticus does not record: a band of scarlet wool was tied to the scapegoat before it was led out into the desert.[3]
When the soldiers placed the scarlet cloak upon Jesus, it was as if they tied a scarlet band onto the true and willing scapegoat in accord with the ancient prophecy of Isaiah: “But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). The high priest chose the scapegoat by lot; Jesus, however, is not chosen by lot; rather, he freely offers himself in love. He who committed no sin lovingly took our sins upon his shoulders – he allowed himself to be made sin, as Saint Paul says – and took our sins to the Cross to remove them from us (cf. II Corinthians 5:21). “By a strange coincidence that was not by chance,” we see that “the soldiers were actually accomplishing what those rites and ceremonies were unable to achieve: ‘Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we were healed’ (Isaiah 53:5).”[4]
As we enter into this Holy Week, may the Lord grant us to see what the soldiers did not see. May the experience of the kingship and victimhood of Jesus lead us to abandon ourselves more fully into the boundless depths of his love. May we know the merciful ways of his regal and sacrificial heart. Amen.
[1] Cf. Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia, 3.1.60.
[2] Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 199.
[3] Cf. Epistle of Barnabas, 7.8.
[4] Jean Hani, The Divine Liturgy: Insights into its Mystery (Kettering, Ohio: Angelico Press, 2016), 20; Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 199.
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