The Choice is Up to Us

Pastor’s Column

Palm Sunday, 2025

Isn’t it funny how many people will pay strict attention to their health, finances, education, material possessions and well-being, but pay little (or virtually no) attention to their souls, which last forever, (that which make us pleasing in the sight of God, such as keeping his commandments)? We tell ourselves that we would never be among the crowd that would crucify Our Lord, but our actions will tell us the real story.

          Every year we hear the account of Our Lord’s passion on Palm Sunday and then again on Good Friday. The various reaction of the crowd reminds me of a song by the Stylistics that has these lines in it: “First you love me, then you hate me, that’s a game for fools!”  I know this song is not in the bible, but it does pretty much sum up the changing emotions of the spectators in the passion drama. The people of Jesus’ times had mixed reactions where Our Lord was concerned! 

          What in the world is going on here? It would appear that the same people who are crying “Hosanna to the King!” as Jesus enters Jerusalem are yelling “Crucify him!  Crucify him!” only a few days later. So what changed? 

          You will notice that we ourselves in the Palm Sunday liturgy play both parts. We begin Palm Sunday entering the church with our palm branches waving and the joy of singing, “Hosanna to the King!” but it isn’t long until we are asked to also play the part of yelling “Crucify him! Crucify him!” during the reading of the passion. 

          Unfortunately, this phenomenon of both glorifying and reviling Christ are dual parts that most of us play regularly. We love him, and yet we also at times can commit terrible sins against him. Jesus in fact makes himself just as vulnerable to us in our own era as he did 2000 years ago. He invites us to love him by our trying to keep his commandments and to trust him by accepting the inevitable crosses that come our way. Again, at times we can also react in ways that glorify God with a cry of “Hosanna,” while later we might react with rebellion, mistrust and sin. In essence, our actions in such moments are as if we were yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

          We live in the middle of a huge battleground; the battlefield is called life on earth and it is our souls that are at stake. Those who don’t realize this can risk putting their eternity in danger by making wrong choices. The forces of evil, the sins that we commit tend to pull us toward hell, while our choices for Christ pull us toward heaven. In this brief and transitory life in this material world, we are daily called to make such good choices for God; and by our choices we are deciding whether to “crucify” the will of God for our lives or to cry “hosanna” to his will! The choice is up to us.

Father Gary