The Way of Humility

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The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Today's Readings:
[ Is 50:4-9a; Ps 31:9-16; Phil 2:5-11; Mt 26:14—27:66 ]

Palm Sunday begins with celebration and ends in silence.

We hear of crowds crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”, laying down cloaks and branches before Christ. And yet, before long, other voices will cry, “Let him be crucified!”. The shift is jarring, but it reveals something deeply human: how easily our praise can falter when confronted with a suffering God instead of a triumphant one.

The Servant in Isaiah speaks with quiet resolve: “I gave my back to those who struck me… I did not hide my face from insult and spitting”. This is not weakness, it is chosen humility. It is trust. As the Psalmist echoes, “Into your hand I commit my spirit”.

And then we are given the heart of it all in Philippians: Christ Jesus, “though he was in the form of God… emptied himself… humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross”.

This is where Franciscan spirituality meets Palm Sunday so beautifully. Francis of Assisi saw in Christ not power to grasp, but love poured out. He embraced poverty, humility, and even suffering—not as ends in themselves, but as a way of walking closely with the crucified Lord.

Palm Sunday invites us to ask: which Christ do we follow? The one we cheer when life is good, or the one we remain with when the road turns toward the cross?

To walk with Christ this week is not to stand at a distance. It is to follow into humility, into surrender, into trust. It is to lay down not just palm branches, but our expectations of how God should act.

Because the King who enters Jerusalem on a donkey does not conquer by force.

He conquers by love.

And that love will carry Him—and us—through the cross, and beyond it.

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