Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
"The Donkey and the King" | April 13, 2025
In this episode, Father Wolf explores the dramatic shift from "Hosanna" to "Crucify him" during Holy Week, revealing how crowds are moved by deep passions and often project their expectations onto spiritual realities.
When Jesus simply dismounted at the temple without any grand proclamation, the crowd's frustrated expectations planted seeds of the coming hostility. "There's nothing more dangerous than a crowd fed disappointment, especially when it's hungry for action," Father Wolfe observes. The authorities' subsequent fear-driven actions to eliminate Jesus paradoxically became the catalyst for the very kingdom they sought to prevent.
As we enter Holy Week, this Palm Sunday narrative challenges us to examine where our "Hosannas" might turn to accusations when God's plans diverge from our expectations. Where are we projecting our desires onto Christ rather than embracing his true mission? The beauty of Easter lies in how God consistently "brings about what is new from the ashes of the old"—our disappointed dreams become the soil where resurrection hope takes root.
How might your own expectations be transformed this Holy Week? Join us as we continue exploring the mysteries of faith that challenge and renew us.
• The Jewish people living under Roman occupation carried a constant longing for freedom and the fulfillment of God's promises
• Jesus had spent three years proclaiming a new kingdom, performing miracles that suggested divine power
• The atmosphere in Jerusalem during Passover was charged with anticipation and religious energy
• Jesus strategically chose to ride an unbroken donkey into Jerusalem, signaling his kingdom was not what people expected
• This humble entrance disappointed the crowd's expectations for a conquering Messiah
• The authorities' fear of Jesus led them to actions that ultimately brought about the very kingdom they tried to prevent
• A reflection on how God brings new hope from the ashes of our disappointed expectations
Join us in the coming weeks as we journey through the glorious Easter season together.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Oklahoma City and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother, and we have arrived to Palm Sunday. All it takes is just a brief repass, a recall of the passion story, for us to encounter again this time this year, the chants that rise up from the crowds in loud, staccato shouts. First it's Hosanna. Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And then, in only a few days more, the crowd is screaming at the top of its lungs crucify, crucify him.
Speaker 2:Anyone who's been to a football game knows that a mass of people is a dumb animal moved by the grossest impulses. This crowd lurches from the first epithet to the second as rapidly as the momentum swing at a championship game, and Jesus is the source of their energy. He's the object of their concern. They're shouting at him. They've seen something in him that rouses their deepest passions, and this is what's being unleashed at this moment their passionate thirst for their hopes to come to pass. Although this crowd is on the pages of the gospel, they're speaking our language. We're moved by the passions hidden in our hearts. We all know how likely we are to be animated by the deep currents of life.
Speaker 2:The crowd shouts in our voice because they're gripped by a passion for freedom. Their country doesn't belong to them. They're being held hostage in it. The Roman Empire has occupied their land and set up shop everywhere. Government and business, trade and manufacture, taxes and finance, religion and order are all monitored by Rome and directed toward the empire. Judea and those who live there are at the sufferance of an absent emperor and are controlled by the might of the Roman army. The people are tired of being crushed under the weight of their history and bouncing from one imperial arrangement to another. More than anything, they long to be free. Oh, not as we would imagine. Their freedom is the freedom to act and to own just as we would envision it. But more than anything else, differently than us, rather than the space and the option to do just as they wanted, they longed for the freedom to live the revelation they had been given and practice the laws of their fathers. Rome permitted the Jews to live their faith, yes, but only as long as it confined itself to the benefit of Roman life and order. While they could fulfill the expectations of the law and live within the boundaries of their faithful observance. They could not glory in being the nation established by God, reflecting the divine order the Creator had laid down In the sad story of Israel. They were left to drink the bitter wine of defeat and occupation, it's true.
Speaker 2:Most people then went on with their lives, occupied only by the challenges of their day. They worked and prayed as they always had, marrying and bearing children. They leaned into the future, as any society must. Their worries were no doubt dominated by the ordinary concerns of family and reputation, insolvency. If there was a time to worry out loud or to be roused by passionate decisions about the future, those times were limited. Everyone is captured by the prison of the immediate. After all, no doubt this was as true in Jerusalem and Nazareth at that time as it is in the Chicago and Chickasha of our day.
Speaker 2:Most people just get on with life, but deep down, at the level of passion and longing, the whole people wanted the world to be changed. They braced at serving the empire and they wanted the chance to tilt their lives toward a meaning their prophets had mentioned, a world in which the promise of God was on everyone's lips and in every man's future. As a people, they had been established by signs and wonders. Their land was given to their ancestors through miracles and prodigies. If such a people could begin with promise, then certainly there could be a future in which the fulfillment of those promises would be theirs. That was the great longing of their hearts. It was more than a lament for a lost age and more than a conviction for a possible future. It was a hunger shooting through every part of their day and touching every one of their decisions.
Speaker 2:If you've ever felt a great loss in your life, you know how it accompanies you, especially if it's a matter of being cheated or wronged. The feeling digs into the soul like a gopher digs into the lawn. You can see its results by the mound of dirt it leaves, even when you can't see the animal itself. No one has to ever know what it looks like or what sustains it the gopher to know that it's there, because its signs are everywhere. And the more you care about your lawn, the more this presence is galling to your senses Worse. Everywhere you look, you're reminded of what this tiny critter is doing to your lawn. It's destroying what should be your pride and joy, turning your care into mounds of spoil everywhere.
Speaker 2:Israel's occupation of subjection was this very thing for every Jew in the land. It took only a second to access it in their lives. Just as it takes us only a moment to replay every aspect of our humiliation or anger and how we've been wronged, it's only just behind our eyeballs, it's immediate to us. In the midst of this stewpot of resentments and remorse, jesus showed up. For the previous three years he'd been proclaiming a gospel of God's new initiative to Israel, a moment of grace in which the deepest desires for a new beginning were to be fulfilled. God would renew his covenant with the people and they would find a new way of living. The certainties of the past would return, only this time they would be all the sweeter because they would contrast with the bitterness the whole people were living through in the present. Just because it had been such a long time and the road so precipitous, the coming of this new kingdom of God would be glorious for Israel. Not only was Jesus the one who proclaimed this new promise, he was the first one to live it.
Speaker 2:At first, the people heard his assurances that the good news they were longing for was to come. Their hopes began to peak and their plans began to form. Not only were their appetites whetted and their longings sharpened. They began to hope in this new day that was to come about. They could begin to feel it, and when hope begins to coalesce, it becomes powerful and then irresistible. And the more they were around Jesus, the more they began to notice that he embodied that of which he spoke. This man had more to him than words. Everyone saw he could heal the sick and cast out evil. This carpenter from Nazareth could conjure bread for 5,000 from a single basket. It was even said he could walk on water.
Speaker 2:God was wasting no time bringing this kingdom to the fore. Jesus was already there, as its first citizen being around him was to stand at an open door with the invitation to pass through, and on the other side was a new day. Of course, he made people uncomfortable. As in any system, no matter how much an imposition on good order and decent governance, the people establish a way to function in which the peace is kept and the people get along. This was, of course, the case in Judea.
Speaker 2:The Romans ran the overall system for their own ends and then left it to the local authorities to make sure civil society functioned. While hardly a place of fairness and goodness, it did function and everyone understood their place in it, and that included the local king and his courtesans, as well as the temple and its court. Especially in a system like this, in which the purpose of the system is contrary to the good of those who live in it, access to its function was everything. The good of Rome was the first concern of the authorities. Everything was structured to make sure this happened and all those who could make this great purpose function smoothly had access. Those who didn't or couldn't remained on the outside.
Speaker 2:When Jesus began to speak of a new day, those who had staked their lives on the present day became uneasy While they longed for justification and redemption. Like every other Jew, they also were content to know they played a part in the world, as it was Upsetting the order of things would cause them no end of difficulty. While some people might enjoy contemplating chaos, not those people who make for order For them. Disorder brings pain, and with pain comes desperation, which breeds more chaos and then more disorder. There is therefore an endlessly deep well of fear among anyone who has access and contemplates that access might be denied him.
Speaker 2:Those on the inside heard Jesus' promises, first with curiosity and then later with anxiety and then finally, with horror, a new kingdom, especially one as thoroughly comprehensive as what God could bring about, spelled loss for them. While it may have been beautiful to contemplate and spellbinding to imagine, it was also fearsome. They might have been left out of the arrangements in this new day to come. It's not hard to imagine their fear or to blame them for it. A family member will often stay in an abusive relationship because to contemplate a change is so terrifying. The fear dominates everything, even when staying guarantees pain and resentment. Facing an unknown future without the steady markers of the present, even when they are sharp-edged, is terrifying. In fact, most people opt not to change anything because it simply costs too much.
Speaker 2:And in Jesus' time, many people became nervous. The men of the temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish governing authority, the religious movements that had carved out a place for themselves among the people, the other rabbis who had their own constituencies and their own focus, and all of those whose livelihood depended on making sure everything stayed exactly the same they all watched Jesus with fear. He was liable to cost them everything. Rome also was not impressed. It was the job of the Roman governor to keep the peace so as to keep the money flowing from Judea into Rome. Once these expectations were met, the governing role of Roman authority was broad and usually well rewarded. It could be very pleasant to be the governor of such a place, especially since the focus of governance was to sustain the power that put him there. Place a threat to this pleasantness and it could become costly. When the Roman governor heard Jesus' words, everyone involved in governance became upset. They had every reason to be anxious concerning what Jesus might say, and especially what he might do. Even more so, they were anxious about what Jesus might have others do. It's safe to say that the sensibilities of everyone in Jerusalem had been placed on a hair trigger. Any slightest movement could set it off. With all this in place, jesus entered Jerusalem in time for the Passover, when the city was filled with Jews from all over in anticipation of the holidays to come.
Speaker 2:Nothing is more exciting than a crowd. In fact, we're such communal animals we'll always gravitate to where others are swelling the crowd just because it is a crowd, and most especially when it's growing larger. Jerusalem always swelled at this time of year. It always filled with an energy, a spirit of anticipation and excitement as the promises of Passover were renewed and the ancient history of Israel as the chosen people of God was revisited. When Jesus came among the people there just one man with his disciples it was only normal. The excitement began to peak and we should remember, crowds grow in anticipation and expectation in a continuous feedback loop that sustains and then grows on itself. Simply by increasing in size, the crowd becomes more attractive. As it becomes more attractive, its size grows even more, capturing more of the attention of more of the people, in a continuous motion. It can't grow infinitely, but it can reach a stage in which the only natural outcome is action.
Speaker 2:Something will take place as long as the super-saturated environment has something to coalesce around. It could happen in a moment around the merest thing. We all learned that as water vapor fills the atmosphere, it will condense around a tiny dust particle or some small disturbance, and thus raindrops form and then begin to fall. So also in an animated, charged crowd, the smallest disturbance, the merest thing, could bring the entire summit of restless, growing anticipative energy to some moment of action in which everyone milling around and looking for something to happen suddenly begin to act In a flash. An average person who would never think of acting alone is carried away by the moment and finds himself shoulder to shoulder with his neighbor. Purposeful and determined, it is no sure. Outcome, just like rain, is never guaranteed. But that such energy condenses into action as the crowd becomes a mob is as certain as science Contemplating such a scenario.
Speaker 2:Of course, then anxieties were everywhere, and not just among the authorities. Only the deaf would be insensible to the growing anticipation. As the people gathered, everyone in Jerusalem had to be wondering what might take place if this famous rabbi from Nazareth were to show up and make a play for the promise of this new kingdom. The scent of something was in the air as the days approached. It was vague and uncertain. Things were tense and fear-laden. People were thinking, and not thinking, all at the same time about what they felt. Apparently, they all knew Jesus would come, but what would happen after that, no one knew.
Speaker 2:So Jesus approaches the entrance to Jerusalem knowing the buzz about his ministry. In the Gospels they explain that Jesus was aware of the energy his preaching aroused and of the opposition to him from the powers that be, both among the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin as well as among the Roman authorities. The resistance was building. Jesus needed a way to diffuse it if he were to continue his proclamation building. Jesus needed a way to diffuse it if he were to continue his proclamation, and so he thought of a rather brilliant way, potentially to diffuse the growing energy of the crowd as well as to signal to the authorities that he was no direct threat to them. He did it with a donkey. Think of his strategy he sends his disciples into the neighboring village at the entrance to the gate to get a donkey for him to ride on.
Speaker 2:Jesus could have come into Jerusalem in the dark, scurrying from house to house, meeting with his disciples in secret, but that would have been fuel for the fire of those who are afraid of his movements. Nothing spreads faster than secrets. The whole Roman world would have been consumed by preoccupation of what he was doing, or he could have made a big deal out of arriving as if a presumptive king had come to take up the reins of his denied kingdom. This would have set all those in opposition to him to grind their teeth in frustration and fear. After all, the reluctant leader who grasps the sword of generalship thrust into his hands had a long pedigree in the ancient world. His turning away from assuming the role would have turned the energy of the crowd into a more focused, more high-energy response.
Speaker 2:So instead he chose to enter in a different, a unique way. He sought out a donkey on which no one had ever ridden. That's in the gospel. Seems like a small detail, but it matters. Have you ever sat on an unbroken horse, ever tried to mount an animal that doesn't want you on it? Especially a young, strong animal, filled with energy and unused to the demands of work. A donkey is not a quarter horse, but it's also not a poodle. Sitting on it was not a smooth ride along the streets of Jerusalem, carrying Christ the King along the boulevard toward the temple, this animal struggled and bucked and careened all over the street for the entire distance he walked, and having people throw their cloaks into the street in front of it so the poor animal couldn't see the ground but instead saw the uneven weave of creased and bunched cloth lying in front of it was to have him grow even more skittish and more disagreeable. There couldn't have been a more definite way to make Jesus look the part of a small-town rabbi than that moment.
Speaker 2:The crowds wanted a conquering general on a cavalry steed, a solemn figure, stern and impassioned as he faced the prospect of defeating Rome. That's the leader they were looking for. They could wave their palms as if they were swords, each one hoping against hope. This man might be the one who could free them from the pain of their history and right the wrongs visited against God's own people. A solemn entrance to which every eye was glued and every heart was beating as one. That was the hope. Eye was glued and every heart was beating as one. That was the hope as it was. Jesus' entrance on the back of a skittish beast of burden, unbroken and untamed, on which no one else had ridden, was the opposite of what their hearts were prepared to gallop toward.
Speaker 2:Jesus made a scene, just not the one stewing in the minds of those whose high hopes had led them to imagine something different. And yet they cried out their hosannas Even in the walking disappointment of Jesus' entrance. Their hearts would not allow their eyes to look beyond the limitations of all they saw to see their hope everywhere. Jesus did all he could to broadcast to everyone that their visions were simply imposed on him, not disclosed from him. He was not leading Israel into a war with Rome or into a new rebellion against the iron-fisted authorities. That was choking it. What they saw in him was the energy pouring into the streets from out of their own hearts, not what he was preaching to them, from the heart of the kingdom he proclaimed. If they were silenced, jesus said, the very stones would cry out, not as a great chorus of creation whose harmonies were coalescing as one with the Son of God, but they would cry out as the great, tragic voice of the crowd whose hunger for change couldn't be contained. In place of arriving at the temple mount, the place where God's presence was evident and celebrated, so as to announce the beginning of God's new reign as King of Israel, as everyone longed for and half expected, jesus simply came to the temple. After his arduous ride, he then dismounted and left. That was it.
Speaker 2:The great mounting charge was discharged at that moment and the building tensions of the day was grounded. There would be no rebellion, no battle, no rebuilding. At least it wouldn't be as the crowds expected. The solemn entrance of the most famous rabbi of this time was over and there was nothing to show for it. But impressions are curious things. They linger long after the moment fades. Anyone who's been to a close down-to-the-wire OU Texas game, for example, knows that the feeling about being there can last longer than any details about the yardage or score or of a particular play. To recall the feeling is no more than to look behind the eyelid. It's as close as that.
Speaker 2:After this moment, in the streets of Jerusalem, those in power could feel the energy and hear the shouts that they were blunted by Jesus' action was of no matter to them because what they felt was real, and so their plans to eliminate the threat of Jesus went forward. He was arrested on the very night of Passover. Jesus went forward. He was arrested on the very night of Passover. As in so much of the history of evil at work, their own plans caused the chaos they were seeking to avoid. By arresting Jesus and carrying through with his execution, they set the stage for the very kingdom they were terrified would be brought about through him. In their fear, they became the agents of all that eventually undermined them. They couldn't know it, but the niggling fear of this rabbi would eventually undo the empire they sought to preserve and usher in another. Or, as St Paul said, if the powers of this world knew that they had killed the Lord of glory, they would not have done it. But so it goes with evil and with the work of God in the world to undo the plans of tyrants and brutes.
Speaker 2:The people were cheated out of their easy dreams. The rabbi had not been congenial to all they wanted, even as they shouted out loud of the hopes placed on his shoulders. When the time came, only a few days later, they were enthusiastic and shouting out their desire to see him crucified. Their hopes were dashed by him. They were willing to dash him in all of the hope that had been intensified by him. Against the stones of Roman authority, hosannas turned to crucify in no time at all. There's nothing much more dangerous than a crowd fed disappointment, especially when it's hungry for action. The action will proceed, especially as the disappointment ripens, and so it did, as the energy animating everyone discharged.
Speaker 2:On Good Friday afternoon, entering Jerusalem, jesus was beginning the capstone of his mission to the people of Israel. He had traveled the length of Judea proclaiming a kingdom yet to come, but proclaiming it already inaugurated. Even as he proclaimed it, those who resisted it were the ones who would help bring it about, just as those who longed for it were the ones who would find it all different than they had imagined. It happened as Jesus capped his mission as he came upon Jerusalem. But, as we all know, the end of all hope is the beginning of new hope. God's initiative is to bring about what is new from the ashes of the old, which means we who are lost in the rubble of our own dreams have a right to hope that there can rise from darkness the promise of light. And thus it does. On the Sunday after Palm Sunday. Back in just a moment. On the Sunday after Palm Sunday. Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment.
Speaker 2:We have a poem today called Rumored Resurrection. Who'd want a resurrection to clutter up his life? Rising from the dead to make everything all confusing? After all, we're balanced on quite a subtle knife. Change is hard, bitter, costly, not amusing.
Speaker 2:And yet, as the world was enjoying Caesar Augustus' reign, there came in far Jerusalem the claim that a man who succumbed to the cross's terrible pain was alive again, that all his sufferings was but for gain. But this can't happen to us now, here, where, it's true, all the rigors of dying were but a prelude to the conquest of fear. Every threat and harm would produce but sighing. What would happen to the force of the law if men were to trust in common resurrection? Society would eat itself, consumed in the maw of men gone wild in freedom's selection. So better quell such rumblings at all quite soon to protect the fragile world we've built here, or we'll be forced to play another tomb as this wild promise breaks out and draws near. All it takes, you know, is one sole man rising from inside the darkened door to loosen the comforting necessary bands of death and lead everyone to expect more. That's rumored resurrection. We're on the cusp of entering the Easter season. I hope that in the weeks to come we can all share this glorious time together.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.