The crucifixion reminds us of Christ’s humility, Bishop Iffert says in Palm Sunday homily

Maura Baker

Staff Writer

Holy Week began with the observance of Palm Sunday, March 29. Mass began at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, on a breezy spring morning, with the congregation, carrying palms, gathering across the street from the Cathedral at St. Mary’s Park — where the palms were blessed and hymns sung before processing back across the street for the Mass proper.

During the observance of Palm Sunday, the Passion of Christ is read — describing Jesus’s journey starting with his arrival into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, until he is crucified and laid in the tomb. The Scripture is read in parts, with different speakers taking on the dialogue of characters such as the apostles, Christ, and other key players, while the congregation reads the parts of the crowd/public.

Bishop John Iffert was the celebrant and homilist for the Mass, during which he commented on the social hierarchy of Ancient Roman society and how it relates to Jesus’s humility.

“Roman society in the first century AD was a highly competitive and stratified society,” Bishop Iffert said. “They were the most status symbol-conscious society of the ancient world. The elite especially thought of their lives as a contest, an honors race … honor meant personal esteem and public office.”

“Though Jesus was in the form of God, he emptied himself, becoming the form of a slave — the very bottom of the social status pecking order.” Bishop Iffert described that not only did Jesus “humble himself” by stooping from divine status to the lowest form of human servitude, “but Paul establishes that Jesus lived his human life in a particularly surprising and humbling way.”

“He was obedient to the Father,” he said. “Even to the point of death, he was a humble servant to the Father. Throughout his lifetime, this devoted and loving servitude made him a servant even to his fellow man, even to his fellow slave.”

The climax of Paul’s statement, according to Bishop Iffert, was that Jesus not only accepted death, but even death on a cross.

“Death on a cross was not only the ultimate extreme of pain,” Bishop Iffert said, “but especially of humiliation.

“The execution method of crucifixion was reserved only for non-citizen criminals, especially slaves,” Bishop Iffert added.

“If the city of Philippi was filled with inscriptions posted by citizens eager to boast of their accomplishments in the Roman race for honors, if we are sometimes preoccupied with status, wealth, office, nationality, celebrity, social media … if we get wrapped up in any of that,” said Bishop Iffert, “Paul counters this mindset with his acclamation of Jesus Christ’s self-emptying humility. Jesus, he meets our own self-promoting passions with his wholehearted embrace of the Father’s will … and he enters into the suffering passion that our selfish sins deserve. And because of this humility, meekness and obedience — God the Father exalts him.”