Homily of Mons. Viganò for Palm Sunday : STILUM CURIAE

Israel is your Rex, Davidis et inclyta proles . You are King of Israel, of the noble lineage of David.  In these solemn words of the ancient hymn to Christ the King we find the Holy Church identified with Israel, the people of God with the chosen people. Plebs Hebræa tibi cum palmis obvia venit: cum prece, voto, hymnis, adsumus ecce tibi: the Jewish people came to meet you with olive branches: behold, we too stand before you with prayers, vows and songs.

It should cause consternation to see how the triumph of Christ, received in Jerusalem as the Son of David, acclaimed as the One who comes in the name of the Lord, will mutate in the course of a few hours into the violent uproar of the crowd before the Praetorium, in the screams, the insults, the torments of the Passion and, finally, in the death of the King of the Jews on the wood of the Cross. A consternation that comes from the consideration of how changeable the mass of the people is, in their propensity to allow themselves to be manipulated by the Sanhedrin and by the elders of the town, in their facility to forget – almost as if it had never happened – the tribute of honors , of palms and olive branches, the cloaks stretched out on the road to the passage of the Lord.

We do not know if among the pueri Hebræorum there were also those who later mocked the dying Savior on the cross. But we do know that they were Jews as Jews were the High Priests, the scribes, the temple guards and those who shouted crucify him before Jesus scourged and crowned with thorns. And the Apostles who fled were Jewish, Jewish was Simon Peter who denied Christ three times, Jewish were the pious Women, Jewish was the Cyrenean, Jewish was Joseph of Arimathea.

But if a part of the Jewish people, despite the Prophecies and God’s interventions by virtue of the Old Law, sent the promised Messiah to death, we must ask ourselves if this betrayal cannot be repeated in a part of the new Israel , the Church, when we see faithful Catholics, but above all members of the Hierarchy who, like the Pharisees and the leaders of the Sanhedrin in the time of Christ, continue to shout crucify him, or repeating quia non novi hominem [because we do not know that man ] (Mt 26, 72).

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Homilía de Mons. Viganò para el Domingo de Ramos : STILUM CURIAE