Bishop Mario Alberto Molina, offers us this commentary for Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord. With theological depth and a human perspective, he helps us to understand why Christ suffered for us and how, from the cross, he teaches us to live with meaning.
Palm Sunday: beginning of the paschal mystery
Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday. The two Sundays allow us to commemorate and celebrate the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the foundation and origin of our faith. 
The liturgy of this Sunday has two emphases. In the commemoration of Jesus’ messianic entry into Jerusalem and the blessing of the palms (when given), we recognize and acclaim Jesus Christ as our savior, as our redeemer, as our king and lord. This is the festive tone. But at Mass, especially through the readings that are proposed to us, we remember and meditate on the passion and death of our Lord. It is the sober accent.
Why did Jesus have to suffer?
One of the central convictions of our faith is that Christ died for us, that he bore our sins, that his wounds healed us. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world because he carries it on his shoulders on the cross. He is our savior and redeemer.
But many wonder why the Son of God had to suffer for us. Perhaps the difficulties stem from the fact that we have lost the ability to see the gravity of human sin and also from the fact that we find it strange that one can bear and take responsibility for the faults of another.
Success and failure: a key from the human experience
Perhaps it is useful to give examples from our secular experience before posing the problem in theological terms. We seek to succeed in life. If we seek success, that means that we are aware that we can fail in life.
Of course, success can be viewed in many different ways. One can succeed or fail in one’s project of building a family. The one who succeeds is the one who manages to form a family where the spouses remain united and understand each other until the end of their days; where it is possible to educate several children until they integrate into society and manage to form a family of their own. But we know that, for many reasons, many marriages dissolve; in other cases, it seems that the children did not respond to the education they were given. It is said that the couple failed in their marital project.
If we focus from a professional perspective, one is successful if he/she manages to position him/herself in the labor and professional world with prestige and competence, if he/she achieves well-paid jobs that allow him/her a certain solvency in life. Those who do not succeed due to irresponsibility, negligence or ineptitude fail.
Life as a project: freedom, decisions and personal development
But let’s ask ourselves the question in an encompassing and general way: what does it mean to succeed or what does it mean to fail in life? I think it can be thought of as successful whoever can say at the end of his days: it was worth it, I am happy with what I did and achieved, not only with my family and my work, but with myself. My life has meaning and I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to live in this world.
On the other hand, one can conceive – and perhaps even know – people who end their lives bitter, who believe that everything went wrong, that their life was a frustration, that nothing makes sense and that one lived in vain, uselessly. In one case we can speak of success and in the other of failure. 
A determining factor in whether we reach the end of our days with one result or another is the use we make of our freedom: what decisions we make, what responsibilities we assume, how we act in the conditions that have been given to us.
We are born with a blank biography; we build it decision after decision, action after action. We can be responsible or negligent, have a clear vision of what we want to become or have no idea about who we are or want to be. We can be driven by envy, hatred, resentment, violence, lust or greed to cause destruction to others and in the process ruin ourselves as well. Or we can act responsibly and ethically, with rationality and purpose to build ourselves as people.
The failure of sin and redemption at the cross
God wants us to succeed in life. May we be able to say at the end of our days: “it was worth it”. God, who created us free, wants us to build ourselves as individuals and as a society. To be able to say at the end “it was worth living” is like experiencing heaven on this side. On the other hand, ending our days with the awareness that our life was a failure and frustration, that it was useless, is like hell on this side.
We are all aware that our freedom is ambiguous. That along with good intentions, there are negligence and irresponsibility. That complete success is rare; that it is easy to get carried away. Alongside the will to do good, feelings of resentment and envy are mixed in. Our freedom is sick. We have caused harm to a greater or lesser degree. And we cannot rehabilitate ourselves.
Christ bears our wounds and restores our freedom
In the penitentiary system, those who commit crimes must suffer, through fines or prison sentences, part of the damage they caused to others and to society before they can be rehabilitated. When we have been negligent, transgressors of the moral law to a greater or lesser degree, irresponsible, the time may come when we want to straighten up our lives and rehabilitate ourselves. But we cannot deactivate our past with our own forces.
In order to defuse that past for each of us, Christ became one of us and carried on the cross our negligence and failures, our envy and grudges, our bad decisions and our destructive acts; our sin.
And as he took upon himself the penalty that was due to us, God heals our freedom freely with his forgiveness and grace, so that our past is not a burden that mortgages our future and we can build our life according to God’s success. This is our salvation.
His wounds healed us. He endured the chastisement that regenerates us (Is 53:5). Christ, being God, did not consider that he should cling to the prerogatives of his divine condition, but, on the contrary, he humbled himself, taking the condition of a servant and made himself in the likeness of men.
Holy Week: celebrating the fullness of God’s love
This is the mystery of love that we contemplate in the death of Christ. That is the salvation he offers to the one who wants to understand his life from the love of God that leads us to his fullness, to success in him. That is why Christ suffered, that is why God gave himself in his Son to enable us to receive his forgiveness and health, grace and salvation.
Celebrating that love is the content of this Holy Week that we celebrate every year, because every year God, with his grace and mercy, sustains us, forgives us and gives us fullness.