Reflecting on Today’s Readings:

Matthew 21:1–11 ; Isaiah 50:4–7 

Philippians 2:6–11 ; Matthew 26:14–27:66

“Meek” is the word the Gospel uses to refer to Jesus, and we understand why as we examine his life: His birth in a stable, his years growing up in Galilee-a backwater province of the Roman Empire. His entrance into the holy city of Jerusalem, made not on a stallion or in a chariot as one might expect of a king, but on a donkey. His supporters wave not swords, but palm branches! Even the method of his death is one reserved for slaves and rebels because it is the most humiliating.

As we examine these details of his life, we are reminded that Jesus was not a king of this world. No, Jesus lived on the margins of society, among the poor, dying the death of a criminal.

What is God trying to tell us by placing his son in these places of tragic vulnerability? Could it be that God is especially present in places that our eyes see as hopeless? And that those who are poor in our eyes are rich in God’s?