Passion Sunday Yr B

Passion Sunday Yr B

25 Mar 2018

Homily

Mark’s account of the Passion is a stark outline of a packed tumultuous period. Everybody seem to be using Jesus for their own agenda. In Mark’s account there is no “Good Thief”. Here even those crucified with him are not sympathetic! We are given no relief here from the suffering.

The Temple leadership are portrayed as fixated on destroying Jesus, using the mob to get their way. Pilate does’nt care about Jesus’ innocence, caring only for his own peace and quiet. The Apostles abandon him, Peter denies him. Only the women stay by him.

He has failed.

And yet…at the very finish of the passage we hear that the veil of the Temple is torn in two! The veil was in the inmost of the four courtyards of the Temple. Only the priests were allowed into that courtyard. The veil hid the Holy of Holies from view. Only the High Priest, after rigorous cleansing rituals and fasting, could enter behind it – and then only on the most special occasions. It was believed that the “glory of the Lord” was behind it. When the Romans first conquered Judea, the Roman general, Pompey outraged the Jewish community by going into it. That was at least one of the reasons why in his conflict with Julius Caesar, the Jewish leadership backed Caesar.

Now, with Jesus’ crucifixion and the tearing of the veil, God is no longer a remote presence, accessible only to the elite. God is in the world. God is among us, sharing our hopes, our fears, our tragedies and triumphs! Of course, God was always there, but not always perceived so. Jesus brings God’s reality to us.

Jesus has apparently failed, but not all failures are really such. Reflect on your own lives – have there been failures, which looking back on, you now see were not really such, but actually an opportunity for a new course?

Where is God in your life

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