Example of Humility: Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
Almighty ever-living God,
who as an example of humility for the human race to follow
caused our Savior to take flesh and submit to the Cross,
graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering
and so merit a share in his Resurrection.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
– Collect, Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord –
This Sunday’s collect focuses our attention on the role of Christ as exemplar. When Jesus took our nature to himself and became man, he not only redeemed us from our sins and opened for us the gate of heaven – he also showed us the way to get there, to reach that final happiness for which we all long but so often cannot find the way.
Today, we focus on his example of humility and patient suffering. Humility is a recognition of the truth of who I am and who God is. A genuine humility leads to a childlike love and trust in God, knowing that he loves us as his children, that he works all things for our good, that the hairs on our head are numbered.
Jesus is able to model perfect humility for us because he knows the Father so intimately. There is no doubt for him – Does God really love me? Is God really in control of this situation? Why is everything so painful? Has God abandoned me? No – his knowledge of God the Father’s love and goodness allows him to trust him completely, and in his humanity to choose to align his will with what God asked of him, becoming “obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:8)
We don’t know the Father like Jesus did, and trusting in God through the ups and downs of life doesn’t always come quite so easily. But through his Passion, Jesus both reveals the face of God to us, and models for us what our response to God should be. God’s love for us is so extravagant that he chose to take our broken nature to himself. The God of the universe chose to become a creature, chose to suffer and be killed by the very men he came to save. Letting the truth of what God has done for us sink deeply into us through meditating on the Passion allows us to grow in our conviction of God’s goodness and love and frees us to humbly acknowledge our dependence on his providence, even trusting him through pain and suffering.
We can look to Jesus as our model of humble acceptance of the will of God. He was a Divine Person, and even in his human nature experienced a union with God that we don’t have. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t experience the full weight of human fear and suffering – in fact, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, his perfection of body and purity of mind and heart means that he felt human pain and sorrow even more intensely than you or I do. In the Garden of Gethsemane, overwhelmed by the fear of his coming Passion, he prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) Imitating Jesus in his humble self-offering doesn’t always mean we have to go looking for suffering. Often, it is enough simply to accept in love the inevitable sufferings in life that are unavoidable, whether small or great.
Suffering will always be a mystery. The cross doesn’t take it all away, or even explain it all away. But it shows us that God loves us and is with us in and through our suffering, that he redeems it and gives it meaning, that suffering and death are not the final word. In heaven, every tear will be wiped away. Through our suffering we have hope that being conformed to his death, we will be conformed also to his resurrection, and made like Christ, enjoy happiness forever with him in heaven.
And so, as we enter into Holy Week, let us meditate on Jesus Christ as an “example of humility,” learning to “heed his lesson of patient suffering” in the joyful hope that we will “so merit a share in his Resurrection.”
“Our Father, you would not willingly call on us to suffer. You say all things work together for our good if we are faithful to You. Therefore, if You ordain it: through disappointment and poverty, sickness and pain, even shame and contempt and calumny, You will support us with the consolation of Your Grace and compensate us for any temporal suffering by the possession of that peace which the world can neither give nor take away.” – St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
