Tomorrow's Palm Sunday and it always seems, liturgically, to be a bit of a double cross. We welcome Christ as King, Hosanna in the highest, and the next minute it's Crucify Him. But it's in the Passion that Christ's kingship is revealed.
"Are you a king then?" asks Pilate. Yes, he is a king. "Thou sayest it." Yes, he is a king. But kingship is not what Pilate thinks it is; not what the world thinks it is. Yes, he is a king: "But now is my kingdom not from hence, if it were, then would my servants fight...but now is my kingdom not from hence." The ways of God's Kingdom are not the world's ways, and the glory of its kingship is altogether different. Its kingship is the kingship of a servant, its liberty is the liberty of free obedience; its virtue is humility. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." That is the essential message of this day.
Its virtue is humility or blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs, we learn, is the kingdom of heaven. By the grace of God.
Defeat the Turk,
LSP
