Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the most important seven days in the history of the human race.

Today is the day when we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the people’s acclamation of Him as king.  We acclaim Jesus Christ as our King because He is God – the Eternal Son of the Father, the Second Person of the Trinity. 

But He is a King who is a humble servant and lover of His people.  He humbled Himself first of all by choosing to assume a human nature and become one of us.  As we hear St. Paul proclaim in his letter to the Philippians, “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance.  He humbled himself….” 

In the gospel reading at the beginning of Mass, we heard the story of Jesus’ entry into the city.  He rides on a colt, as foretold in the Book of Zechariah (9:9): “Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!  See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, Meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.” 

He comes from the east.  Bethany and Bethphage were villages just to the east of Jerusalem.  The Mount of Olives lies just to the east of the city as well.  Again, Zechariah foretells this day (14:4): “That day, his feet shall rest upon the Mount of Olives, which is opposite Jerusalem to the east.”

It is from the east that Jesus will one day return to us again. 

Yet, despite his appearance in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, despite the words of peace and reconciliation that he spoke, despite the wonders and marvels he worked, in a short while these same people who welcomed his as their king will be crying, “Crucify him!”

Why?  Because he was not who and what they thought he should be.

That is something about which all of us need to remind ourselves constantly – we don’t get to make God what we think He should be; we don’t get to tell Him how to run the universe; we don’t decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.

The life of Christian faith is a life in which we strive to conform ourselves to God and to His will, not one in which we strive to conform Him to ours.