The following are extracts from Pope Francis’s homily on Palm Sunday:

He did it for us

“Christ bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only-begotten, beloved son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: abandonment, the distance of God. Why did it have to come to this? He did it for us. There is no other answer. For us. Every one of us, hearing of Jesus’s abandonment, can say: for me. This abandonment is the price he paid for me. He became one with each of us in order to be completely and definitively one with us to the very end.”

Jesus continued to trust

“On the cross, even as he felt utter abandonment, Jesus refused to yield to despair; instead, he prayed and trusted. In the hour of his abandonment, Jesus continued to trust. At the hour of abandonment, he continued to love his disciples who had fled, leaving him alone. In his abandonment he forgave those who crucified him. Here we see the abyss of our many evils immersed in a greater love, with the result that our isolation becomes fellowship.

"A love like this, embracing us totally and to the very end, the love of Jesus, can turn our stony hearts into hearts of flesh. His is a love of mercy, tenderness and compassion. This is God’s style: closeness, compassion and tenderness.”

Loving the abandoned

“Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned. For us, as disciples of the ‘forsaken’ Lord, no man, woman or child can be regarded as an outcast, no one left to himself or herself. The rejected and excluded are living icons of Christ: they remind us of his love, his forsakenness that delivers us from every form of loneliness and isolation. Brothers and sisters, today let us implore this grace: to love Jesus in his abandonment and to love Jesus in the abandoned all around us.”

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)