Christ Jesus emptied himself to the point of dying on a cross. Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord that we observe today marks the beginning of the Holy Week celebrations which serve both as the climax and culmination of the Lenten journey. The Lenten observances that we have been keeping since Ash Wednesday have been meant to ready us for a worthy celebration of the great mysteries of our redemption that will be commemorated during the Easter Triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday). Our redemption was won for us at a price (cf. I Corinthians 6:20), that price being the self-offering on our behalf of God’s only begotten Son. In the life, passion and death, as well as the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we were set free from slavery to sin and eternal death. Jesus Christ willingly chose to assume a creaturely nature and live in our midst in order to gift us with freedom, not so that we can do whatever we want, but rather to live as children of God. Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection has set us free so that we can be imitators of him who unselfishly gave himself for his brothers and sisters.  For it is only by imitating Jesus that we can regain the image and likeness of God in us that we continually lose through our inclination to sin. 
Our journeying with Jesus during this Lenten period has been meant to help us be ready for a worthy celebration of the mysteries of our salvation. Our following in the footsteps of Jesus from the desert of temptation to the mountain of transfiguration was an opportunity for us to regain our true identity as those created in the image and likeness of the Creator God. Unlike the other creatures of the universe, God gifted the human person with God’s own breath (cf. Genesis 2:7). It is a divine gift that enables the human person to “be like God” in the sense of having in him/herself a capacity for the ‘other’ (that is, a relational being). It is this gift that was meant to enable the human person to live in communion with fellow creatures and with the Creator. Moreover, the Lord God instructed the human person not to step outside this communion since it was only through this communion that the human person was to thrive and attain eternal life. However, the human person chose to disregard God’s commandment and severed this life-giving relationship. Outside the communion, it was easy for the human person to disregard the ‘other.’ And insofar as men and women continue to disregard the other, their true identity remains elusive. The mystery of our redemption that we celebrate during the Holy Week is that of our being set free in order to regain our identity as beings who are ‘other-oriented.’
Becoming ‘other-oriented’ calls upon us to  make our own the mind of Christ Jesus…who emptied himself in order to be of service to the ‘other’ (cf. Phil 2:5ff, the second reading for today). Being ‘other-oriented’ calls one to service. Service begins with the emptying of the self, that is, putting away and letting go of attitudes and behaviors that can hinder my being there for my brothers and sisters. There is no service without the emptying of the self. Only by emptying the self can one create a space in his/her being for the other. Emptying the self for service calls for humility (lowering the self), for in order to serve, one has to come to a level that is lower than the one he/she is serving, so to speak. This is what St. Paul is asking of the Philippians even as he urges them to take Christ Jesus as their model. Jesus’ mission took him to the lowliest of the lowly – the despised and looked down upon, those considered sinners and scum of the earth (the ‘untouchables’) – and he ministered to them with love and care. In addition to letting go of his divinity, Jesus also refused to pick up the values of his society that would have seen him despise those whom the society had come to brand as ‘lower’ than him. Instead, he chose to  come down and assume their lowly nature for only in doing so could he raise them up. 
Our Lenten observances of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting have had as their aim the emptying of ourselves of the attitudes that prevent us from assuming the position of our brothers and sisters in order to love them as we love ourselves. We have sought to empty ourselves of pride, anger, jealousy, selfishness, unforgiving hearts, hatred, indifference, and all the things that puff us up. For unless we enter into the Holy Week with emptied selves, we cannot be able make our own the sacred celebrations that conclude our Lenten journey. Unless we wrap ourselves with the cloak of humility as Jesus did, we cannot accompany him as he makes his final entry into Jerusalem in order to make the ultimate self-offering on behalf of his brothers and sisters.