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| Hosanna to my Saviour |
Hosanna is the word for praise
today. Hosanna means ‘God who saves’, ‘God who cares’, ‘God who loves’. We have entered into the week of the Passion
of Christ. It is a time to closely watch and experience God who saves, God who cares,
God who loves in the different events that we will be participating in this
week. In one way we are trying to find the depth of meaning of these events God
has done for us in Jesus. So Jesus invites us to watch attentively the journey
of the passion. We listen to every word that is spoken by Jesus, we repeat every
sincere word that is spoken of him and to him. Every step of that journey is
redemptive and our watchfulness helps us to appropriate the power of redemption
into those areas of our life where we need God in being saved, being loved and
being cared.
Jesus also invites us to
imitate these events in our life. As the images of the Passion scenes are there
in our mind, it is not merely a resembling of those events but really living
them in our life as we go through our own daily ways of the Cross. Prophet
Isaiah speaks in the image of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh, “Each morning he
wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear” (Is
50/4). God awakes his servant in suffering and gives a listening ear to see his
pains touched by the grace of God.
The week of the passion is a
time also to see our own pains in a graceful manner. To open our own wounds
before others and acknowledge them as our identifying mark before them though
they caused us harm, humiliated us or destroyed us. Jesus said: “See my wounds”.
He was not ashamed because he was undergoing fatigue or because he was wounded.
There was a flow of grace in his failures and woundedness. We are also unjustly
condemned, betrayed and rejected. Perhaps we are ashamed of those who belong to
us. Here in this week, it is a time we allow God’s grace flow into our pains.
Then at the resurrection we can look at our own wounds and cry out, “My Lord,
and my God”. Jesus endured suffering and entered into glory not because he was
a hero. He did everything in living the faithfulness to the Father. There was a
proud belonging to the Father. It is in this fidelity our pains are being
transformed into the image of the passion of Jesus.
