From the Gospel: Reliving, lest we forget
In the annual recounting of the passion of Jesus we express our desire to participate more intimately in his total and selfless act of saving love for the redemption of humanity
Palm Sunday and the Lord’s Passion. Today’s readings: Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2, 6-11; Matthew 26,14–27,66
Between October 2024 and September 2025, no less than 4,849 Christians were murdered for their faith. Nearly 3,500 of those deaths happened on Nigerian soil. These are staggering figures.
Behind each death is a precious person’s life, family, and friends, and so much more. Their crime? It is their love for the one who preached forgiveness rather than hatred, who resolutely took the road that led to Calvary, and who willingly gave his life for us all. He was the one who, faced with the choice between backing out and generously giving up his life for us all, pronounced those sacred words to the Eternal Father: “may your will be done” (Matt 26,42).
This Sunday, the Christian community begins its journey with its suffering Saviour, walking step by step with him in the final moments before his crucifixion. Though each of those thousands of Christian martyrs murdered in the last few months deserves our respect and honour, it is directly to Jesus that our attention turns year after year. It is from him that those martyrs drew their inspiration and strength.
Hence, gathered as a community of faith, filled with a humbling gratitude and deep reverence, Christians participate in the activities and celebrations of Holy Week to commemorate Christ’s boundless love shown in his passion.
Palm Sunday’s Gospel is a long account of those events, from the Last Supper, through Jesus’s arrest and appearance before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, and his eventual death and burial. On Good Friday, the Church will offer another account of the passion, the one from John’s Gospel. This version will take us from the Garden of Gethsemane to the garden where Jesus would be laid in a new tomb. In both accounts, his self-control, his nobility of spirit, his complete obedience to the heavenly Father, and his total “yes” to the wellbeing of humanity are palpable.
Despite suffering’s incomprehensible nature, it can paradoxically be a huge source of renewal
Yet, one might ask, why should we be listening to these long passion narratives year after year? It is curious that, though people are usually drawn to light-heartedness and amusement, they can also relate very strongly to sombre and serious contexts.
For instance, the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows usually draws among the largest crowds. We can feel for a suffering mother. Similarly, the solemn meditation on the final hours of Jesus’s life on earth proves profoundly meaningful. Despite suffering’s incomprehensible nature, it can paradoxically be a huge source of renewal.
In his article ‘From healing to wounding: The psalms of communal lament and the shaping of Yehud’s cultural trauma’, Danilo Verde notes that several scholars believe that biblical texts recounting the community’s traumatic experiences were written to help their readers cope with such predicaments. However, Verde opines that texts such as laments were written to injure rather than to heal. Their function was to keep the community’s wounds gaping.
Similarly, the annual recounting of the passion of Jesus is meant to leave us wounded. This is not some pathetic wallowing in suffering of a bunch of masochists. Rather, it expresses the desire to participate more intimately in his total and selfless act of saving love for the redemption of humanity.
Acts of kindness should never be forgotten. Christ’s act of sacrificial love should be indelibly etched in our memories. Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Recessional’, written in 1897, is set in the context of imperial Britain and is a plea to the Lord that the nation’s power not lead it to pride and boastfulness. Hence, he repeats the phrase “Lest we forget”, meaning that Britain must never forget God on whom it depends.
That phrase was later used to commemorate fallen soldiers. But Christians annually recall the passion to commemorate the one who “took the fall and thought of me above all” (Michael W. Smith, Above All), lest they forget.
