The Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday roles around every year. It’s the day where we know walking into mass that it will be extraordinarily long and that the gospel is nothing new.We get those palms which we know will eventually be burned for the following year for Ash Wednesday and we end up playing with them throughout the day pulling them apart.However, after re-reading the gospel, alone, not in a huge congregation, my whole thought process on the story of Palm Sunday truly changed.In today’s gospel we read the same story with the same message regarding about how Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate and condemned to death. However, when we read the story at the procession of the palms, when Jesus rode into town on a donkey, people hailing him as their King, we have a different image of our Lord.The reason that this story struck me so much this time was not that Jesus was hailed as King…. that’s obvious. I am intrigued about the person who gave his donkey for Jesus to ride into town (and who) recognized (Jesus) as that King.It may seem like no big deal at all; in fact it seems to be that part of the story that no one notices, no one probably even wrote it down or even remembers where the donkey came from. But the donkey was actually an essential element in the story.
“Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find an ass tethered, and a colt with her.Untie them and bring them here to me.And if anyone should say anything to you, reply, ‘The master has need of them.’Then he will send them at once.”
So the thought is this…. Who was that guy who gave his donkey to the Master? Nobody knows his name or anything about him, yet he played an integral part in moving the story of Jesus’ love along its path. I saw this and realized that that particular man made a difference in this world.He helped to change the world. I really want to be like the man who gave his donkey…. Nobody knows him but without his gift to the Master, the story of Jesus would not have been fulfilled.It’s hard, sometimes, to give freely and without acknowledgement. It’s even harder to say yes to what is needed of others, especially when it is God who is asking us to give.So really, at the end of this Lent, the beginning of this Holy Week, what is my‘donkey’? What is it that I still have that I’ve been holding back in my life that I will not surrender to Christ?Is there something that I still need to let go of to grow closer to Jesus? And if I can come to that realization of what my ‘donkeys’ are in my life, am I willing to give it to others freely, generously, and maybe even, anonymously?