Palm Sunday A Mt 26,14-27

Persian history recounts King Xerxes’s return, which was then characterized by an unsuccessful military campaign in Greece. The ship carrying the king was overloaded. He asked the captain if there was any hope of salvation. The captain replied, “Yes, but we must lighten the ship.” The king then spoke to his subjects: ‘If you care about the king’s life, you must give up your own. Otherwise, we will all sink.’ The soldiers fell to their knees before their king and then jumped into the sea one by one. In this way, King Xerxes was saved. His subjects had to sacrifice their lives so that he could live.

From today, Palm Sunday, the Gospels will tell a different story. Palm Sunday has two Gospels. They can be characterised by the words ‘HOSANA’ and ‘CRUCIFIX’. These words accurately describe the typical life of a person, with its joys and worries, which Jesus Christ also experienced. But he goes further. He does all this for our salvation. He wants us to lead our lives correctly, in the direction of God the Father.

A certain fisherman lost his way at sea multiple times, prompting his friends to gift him a compass. They warned him never to go to sea without it. When he set sail again, he took the compass with him. But he got lost again. When his friends rescued him, they reproached him for not using the compass. The sailor explained what had happened. ‘I wanted to go north,’ he explained, ‘but no matter how hard I tried to turn the compass needle in the right direction, it kept turning in the wrong one.’ The sailor was so sure of where north was that he stubbornly tried to force the compass to point in the direction he wanted. When it did not obey him, he threw it away. This deprived him of the opportunity to show him the right direction, which would have saved him from a difficult situation.

Jesus is that compass for us. He shows us the path we should follow. Those who follow it will avoid unnecessary wandering, shipwreck, and destruction. History repeats itself. However, there is a fundamental difference between Jesus and King Xerxes. The latter demanded the death of his subjects of themselves. Jesus died to save us.