PALM SUNDAY (2024)
Readings:
Preliminary Commemoration Of Jesus’ Entry Into Jerusalem
Mark: 11:1-10
Mass
Isaiah 50:4-7
Psalms 22:8-9, 17-20, 23-24
Philippians 2:6-11
Mark 14:1-15:47
There are only two times in the Church’s liturgical year when we take the time to read the entire gospel accounts of Jesus’ Passion and Death. The first occurs on what we call Palm, or Passion, Sunday, when one of the three Synoptic accounts is read. The second time is on what we call Good Friday, when we always read the Passion Narrative from the Gospel of John. Both of these readings take place during the week we call Holy.
From my earliest days as an altar boy, and through the decades I spent as a Benedictine monk, I always loved the pomp and solemnity with which these days were celebrated. When I became a diocesan priest and pastor, I realized the amount of work it took to make this Holy Week appear to unfold with apparent ease, and it was impossible to keep me from imposing the high level of monastic standards on more ordinary parochial situations. I still love the liturgical celebrations of Holy Week, although what happened eight years ago dealt my feelings for the Holy Week celebrations a tremendous blow. Wanting to preserve even the smallest of normality in what was a fairly new abnormal situation, I made my way to the Chrism Mass, always held on Tuesday of Holy Week at the Venice Cathedral. While I couldn’t vest as the other priests attending, I was not forbidden from wearing clerical attire, and I took the first available seat on the center aisle, the empty pews spread out before me which were reserved for the priests in procession. As fate would have it two priests with whom I used to be close sat in the pew just in front of me. No eye contact was ever made. As far as some were concerned I had become a pariah. That was the last Chrism Mass I have ever attended, and the memories of that day have badly tarnished the feelings I had for Holy Week.
As I get older I see how connected most of us are to our faith, and to this holiest week of the Church’s year. Everything we do as Christians points to the importance of this week, for had it not happened, God’s will might not have been done, and we just might be living our lives differently. It is clear in our reading of the Passion narratives this week just how much love Jesus has for each of us, so much love, Philippians tells us, that “though He was in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
We are to remember that Jesus died for all humankind; Christians have no monopoly on the love of Jesus. Jesus died for all people, and they are redeemed, whether they acknowledge it or not, by the blood of Jesus Christ. When our readings describe Jesus being taken prisoner, when we see Jesus scourged, when we feel the crown of thorns piercing His forehead, when we see Jesus stumbling with the weight of the cross through the streets of Jerusalem, when we imagine the agonizing pain of being nailed to the cross – it is then that we have a hint of how much Jesus loves us.
This week when we proclaim the Passion accounts, see yourselves as one of the actors in the drama, and most importantly, unite the times you have felt mistreated, misunderstood, betrayed, in pain, physical or emotional, abandoned by God – unite those times with what Jesus went though, for it is then that our own lives can be marked by moments that are truly redemptive.
Above all this week, regardless of how solemn a week it is, let us remember that when Jesus says “it is finished” from the cross, all is not done, for in three days the Lord God, His Father, will raise His lifeless body from the grave, and we will rejoice that what was once thought impossible, is possible, and the same will happen to us, if we unite our souls with that of Jesus.
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