Palm Sunday's gospel follows Christ from his arrival in Jerusalem to His burial. The searching and questioning is over. All the interaction here is a concentration of insincerity, malice, mendacity, betrayal, cruelty and weakness all revolving around Christ who stands at the center of this savagery, calm and detached. It is as if He is on some parallel timeline as he speaks over and past His questioners and apostles, immersed in a different prophetic-filling space with its own direction and momentum. Christ's challenging answers to Pilate are well known but there is another remarkable exchange buried here.
Christ asks the apostles what money He gave them to go out and preach and they answer none. Then He says:
"But now he that has a purse, let him take it....; and he that hath not, let him sell his coat and buy a sword."
Get some money? Buy a sword? He is saying here that this is the moment of materialism and ambition against spirituality, the purse and the sword against the soul. This is the purse and the sword's last gasp.The apostles, missing every possible point, actually rummage about and find swords!
"But they said: Lord, behold here are two swords. And He said to them, it is enough."
Wouldn't you love to see His expression when He said that?
Christ asks the apostles what money He gave them to go out and preach and they answer none. Then He says:
"But now he that has a purse, let him take it....; and he that hath not, let him sell his coat and buy a sword."
Get some money? Buy a sword? He is saying here that this is the moment of materialism and ambition against spirituality, the purse and the sword against the soul. This is the purse and the sword's last gasp.The apostles, missing every possible point, actually rummage about and find swords!
"But they said: Lord, behold here are two swords. And He said to them, it is enough."
Wouldn't you love to see His expression when He said that?
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