Patrick Comerford
We have come to the last week in Lent, and Holy Week begins today with Palm Sunday or the Sixth Sunday in Lent (13 April 2025). Last night was also the first night of Passover, which began at sunset and continues until next Sunday evening (20 April 2025), which is also Easter Day.
Later this morning, I hope to sing with the Choir at the Palm Sunday Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, beginning with a procession from the Market Square. Later this afternoon, I hope to find an appropriate place the watch the Cambridge and Oxford boat race, and then there is a small family celebration in the evening.
But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 19: 28-40 (NRSVA):
28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” just say this: “The Lord needs it”.’ 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying the colt?’ 34 They said, ‘The Lord needs it.’ 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying,
‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!’
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ 40 He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’
Today’s Reflection:
Today, there are three different options in the Lectionary for Gospel readings this morning: the account in Saint Luke’s Gospel of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Luke 19: 28-40) for the Liturgy of the Palms; Luke 22: 14 to 23: 56 or Luke 23: 1-49, for the Liturgy of the Passion, telling of Christ’s Passion during Holy Week, how he carried his cross to Calvary, his Crucifixion; and the passion narrative in Saint Matthew's Gpospel, Matthew 27: 1-54, or Matthew 26: 1 to 27: 61, or Matthew 21: 1-13. A sung version of the Passion narrative in Saint Matthew’s Gospel is being sung by the choir in Stony Stratford this morning.
Traditionally, the Gospel reading for the Liturgy of the Passion on Palm Sunday was so long that this was known as the ‘Long Gospel’.
As a Gospel reflection for Palm Sunday this morning, I have chosen the poem ‘The Donkey’ by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), an English writer, journalist, critic and poet who was well-known for his reasoned apologetics.
Chesterton’s biographers have identified him as a successor to Victorian writers such as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin. In his life, he moved eventually from High Church Anglicanism to becoming a Roman Catholic in 1922.
Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in London, and was educated at Saint Paul’s School, the Slade School of Art and University College London.
At first, he hoped to become an artist but eventually became a journalist, writer, critic and poet. One of his memorable fictional characters is Father Brown.
His circle of friends included the Dublin-born playwright George Bernard Shaw, PG Wodehouse, HG Wells and Bertrand Russell. In the middle of his epic poem, ‘The Ballad of the White Horse,’ he famously states:
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
He died in 1936 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and his Requiem Mass took place in Westminster Cathedral.
In this poem, Chesterton uses the donkey as a literary device to link birth and death, Christmas and Easter. We often think of the donkey as the lowly, humble, unattractive, even stupid, beast of burden who carries Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But, tradition says, the Christ Child also rode on a donkey when he was carried in the womb by his mother, the Virgin Mary, to Bethlehem before his birth, and on a donkey when his family fled to Egypt.
However, this poem points us, not so much to the donkey, but to our ‘Beast of Burden,’ Christ, who carried the burden that no one else could bear – the sins of the world. Like the Suffering Servant in our reading from the Prophet Isaiah, Christ looked even more ‘monstrous’ than the donkey (see Isaiah 50: 4-9a), he was ‘starved, scourged, derided,’ four times in the Gospels he was ‘dumb,’ but his hour of glory came on the cross.
Is the donkey too hard on himself? But then, most us may be too hard on ourselves. If the lowly beast of burden becomes a bearer of the King, then surely Christ can see through the ways our perceptions of our own worth and understanding are at times awry and distorted.
It might be too easy to think of the donkey as foolish. The donkey may be derided as a stupid animal, yet he is used by God for the most triumphal journey in history, highlighting the difference between God’s wisdom and ours. No matter how humble or crushed in spirit we may feel, we are all God’s beloved children and we are all capable of being raised in glory.
Nobody is truly worthless, no matter what others may think. Just as the donkey is an unsung, unloved and unattractive creature who becomes the hero in Chesterton’s poem, so too the most humble and unattractive people, even though they are without social connections or the appearance of being important, are seen by Christ as who they truly are, made in God’s image and likeness.
The donkey remains dumb and does not declare his moment of greatness to those who deride him. Instead, his experience is an internal knowledge of his true value.
The image of the donkey in his moment of glory carrying Christ speaks of the intrinsic worth of every human, and the glory of every human soul in God’s love. In God’s eyes, we all deserve palms before our feet.
The Donkey, by GK Chesterton
When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient, crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 13 April 2025, Palm Sunday):
A ‘Holy Week Reflection’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).’ This theme is introduced today with reflections by the Right Revd Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester and Chair of Trustees, USPG:
Read Luke 23: 34
‘The telegram arrived early on Good Friday 1980. It informed me that my bishop had decided to sponsor me to train to be a priest. The very next thing in my diary that morning was to carry the processional cross for the sung liturgy, as all around me the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where I was researching in mathematics, sang Allegri’s setting of the Miserere. It struck me then, that the message I had just received was my calling to hold up the cross of Jesus before God’s people not just for an hour one Spring Friday morning but for the rest of my life.
‘What had drawn me first to the Christian faith, and then on to seeking ordination, was the powerful sense I had of the God who, in Jesus Christ, knew me better than any earthly person, and at the same time loved me more deeply than any human being ever could. Jesus showed that limitless love throughout his ministry. He healed the sick, freed those held captive by evil, listened to the voices of outcasts, confronted the perpetrators of injustice. Above all, he forgave sinners, often even before they had plucked up the courage to repent. This was a Jesus I wanted both to follow and to hold up so that others like me could come to know him, or to know him better.
This was the forgiveness and love he showed supremely that first Holy Week, when on what Christians now call Good Friday, he allowed himself to be murdered for love of you and me. Nailed to the cross, Jesus proved conclusively that his love and forgiveness had no limits, not even death itself.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 13 April 2025, Palm Sunday) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:
‘This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation’ (Psalm 118: 20-21).
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
to take upon him our flesh
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ,
you humbled yourself in taking the form of a servant,
and in obedience died on the cross for our salvation:
give us the mind to follow you
and to proclaim you as Lord and King,
to the glory of God the Father.
Additional Collect:
True and humble king,
hailed by the crowd as Messiah:
grant us the faith to know you and love you,
that we may be found beside you
on the way of the cross,
which is the path of glory.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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