Father Glenn J. Comandini

If we recall the opening Gospel on Palm Sunday,  we remember how the crowds placed Jesus on the back of a donkey and placed a purple robe around our Lord and waved palms at him as he entered Jerusalem.  They, who did not fully understand Jesus, believed him to be the Messiah, long-promised by the Prophets.  However, the King, who they anticipated, would be a “Warrior-King” who would usher in a new age in which all Israel’s enemies would submit to the truth, abandon their false gods and worship the One, True, God whose Ark of the Covenant linked the Jewish people to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in a bond of love because Israel was his Chosen People.  As we know from salvation history, the Kingship which they believed Jesus would exercise could not be further from the images they conjured from the Scriptures.  To the contrary, their King would be condemned, flogged, crowned with thorns, nailed to a Cross and hung in public view for having been found guilty of blasphemy by the Jewish religious authority, and as a threat to civil peace by the Romans.

When we think about the events leading up to the Passion, one theme is constant: Jesus was continually knocked down.

Why is it that a medical transport helicopter carrying a newborn and two nurses enroute to Philadelphia Children’s Hospital crashed “safely” in Drexel Hill, Pa., in January with the pilot and passengers exiting the wreckage with non-life-threatening injuries; yet a fire in the Bronx, N.Y., started by a faulty space heater left 17 people dead, including eight children?