Homily: Fourteenth Sunday Year A

 

Reading 1: This prophetic word was fulfilled on Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered into Jerusalem. He did so on a donkey. This was the way a conquering king would enter the vanquished city.

 

The people of Jerusalem, expecting a Messiah, rejoiced and shouted out Hosanna. Jesus is seen as King and Savior, bringing peace. The key is the meekness with which he comes to save us. Though Jesus is God/Man, who could have come with legions of angels, he comes humbly. His weapon is that of humble obedience to the will of the Father, embracing the will of the Father, ever to the death of the cross.

 

Humble obedience was what Adam and Eve did not have. As a result, sin enters into the world. Jesus, the second Adam, exemplifies the pattern of true relationship with the Father. Jesus’ external weakness at the time of his arrest and cruel death was, in fact, his strength which overcame sin and eternal death.

 

The moral of this reading is: if we acknowledge Jesus as Lord and King of our lives, we will share in his victory and experience his peace, which is not external but internal.

 

Gospel: This is one of the few times that the prayer of Jesus is recorded. Each time, it is addressed to the Father specifically, not to God in general. Jesus is the true Son of God, God himself, equal to the Father. But in his humanity he addresses the Father directly.

 

He praises the Father. What is the context? He has just sent his disciples on their first missionary journey to proclaim the kingdom of God and to call people to repentance with signs and wonders. The disciples saw the power of God. They returned and reported to Jesus what they experienced.

 

Jesus praised the Father for revealing his plan to the little ones who acted on it. Then he tells them that they have seen the Father at work through them. But to know the Father, it is the Son who reveals him; for it is the Son who has seen the Father and knows the Father. Jesus is the mediator to know the Father.

 

Jesus invites them to see him, Jesus, as the key to the Father’s plan. Jesus is the Lord and invites them to believe and accept him as their Lord and Savior.

 

What is this yoke? He was showing them that when they cling to him as Lord, he will show them how to humbly embrace the will of the Father in all things, like he himself did. The rest promised is resting in the arms of the Father in the midst of difficulties and problems. We can choose our way, which may be the way of the flesh, or we can choose the will of the Father. To do that we choose to follow the lead of the Spirit. One leads to isolation and alienation. The other to security and protection.

 

Reading 2: Paul shows us the evident contrast between the way of those who follow Adam and the way of those who follow Jesus. Adam symbolizes the way of sin, which is the symbol of the flesh. Jesus symbolizes the way of the spirit.

 

We were born in the flesh; we were reborn in baptism in the Spirit. Because of baptism we are no longer to be slaves of the flesh, slaves of sin, but sons and daughters of God, in whom the Spirit of God dwells. As long as we live in the life of sin, we are away from the Lord. If we die in sin, alienated from God, we will not be raised up to live forever with God. Because of what Jesus has done for us, we are debtors to him. We owe him our lives. So Paul says we no longer are to live in sin, but to put sin to death through obedience to the will of the Father. In this way the life of God will remain in us.