Today's Message: Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
Isaiah 50:4-7, Philippians 2:6-11, Matthew 26:14-27:66
Marking the beginning of Passion Week, Palm Sunday is unlike any other that we have celebrated in the past, considering the pandemic coronavirus we are experiencing. My prayers and private masses are remembering all of you reading these words. For so many of us we are heeding the demands and serious suggestions to maintain a social distance ... to do as much work at home as we can … to stay in. It is so difficult to do but absolutely necessary for us social human beings. So what is the message from the Lord for us today as we begin this most sacred of weeks? PRAY. Prayer is my conversation with God. It is the most basic platform that I can use to develop an ever deeper relationship with the Lord. What does it involve? Listening … learning ... loving. Then, so importantly: Action. Practically this means that since every single person is created in love by God — all are my sisters and brothers — we are all part of the same family. That’s our mission during these tragic days: to love family. We do this, but our minds are elsewhere. The news programs and media list the number of confirmed coronavirus cases … then the deaths: throughout the world … in the US and then in Virginia. I have been reading these and at the same time looking to the end of my life. This is good to do. Jesus was looking at His own life as a culmination of showing His love to each of us.
One of my Lenten books is Meditations of a Hermit by Fr. Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), who was a cavalry officer in the French Army, then an explorer and geographer, and finally a Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg in the Sahara in Algeria. From November 5-15, 1897, he made a retreat at Nazareth in his cell at the Poor Clares cloister or in their chapel before the exposed Host. At one point he wrote about his future on earth, his death, judgment, heaven or hell. His words:
I rejoice in God’s mercy to me. Such are my past and my present. What is to be my future? Is it to be long or short on earth? Happy or sorrowful? Holy as I long for it to be, or full of sin? From which I implore You to save me. No one can know. It will be as You will it, my God. I only ask that it may not be spent in offending You. That cannot be Your will. You have commanded us all to be perfect and You have loaded me with graces and said, ‘To him that has much more shall be given.’ So whatever may be my future, whether long or a day’s span, happy or sorrowful, it must be Your will that it be sanctified. What shall I do that it may be so? ‘Follow me and only Me. Do not come to Bethany to see Me and also Lazarus. Come to see Me and only Me.’ … Imagine yourself as in the house at Nazareth. You have given yourself to Me. I will lead you for my greater glory, for the consolation of My Heart, since that is what you desire and ask for … this life will be followed by death. … You know how cowardly you are, but you know too that you can do all things in Him who gives strength, that I am All Powerful.
The Lord was speaking to Fr. Charles and He speaks to each one of us in His Passion: “I love you so deeply and I have come to show each of you what love is all about and how deep is God’s love for you.”
With the palms the people placed so reverently begins the welcoming of Jesus, ending with the crowd shouting: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” We see this totally innocent Jesus as the suffering Christ, our Savior, our Redeemer. He is a gentle and harmless figure who spent His ministry doing selfless, compassionate and loving things ... whose loneliness and being misunderstood lasted until the end. The Gospel Passion accounts can become old, familiar stories we know so well. Perhaps I can take these along with my imagination and walk the walk with Jesus. I can imagine Him leaving the Last Supper room and going to one of His favorite prayer places, the Garden at Gethsemane ... the solemn stillness broken by the inattentiveness of the apostles who in no way know what is coming. Judas comes with “… a large crowd, with swords and clubs.” Crowds yell and scream and are uncontrollable and mean, unlike the order seen with soldiers. They forcefully lead Jesus away to High Priest Caiaphas, who's mad for power and hence blindly eager to please Pilate who himself is a cruel, bloodthirsty tyrant. Jesus is put in a dungeon, no doubt shackled, left to His thoughts. He knows what will be happening: human fear has to set in. He also remembers what has just happened, the first celebration of the Eucharist. He remembers me each time I have celebrated this sacrament, and He remembers each of you who is reading this blog. It brings comfort and joy that we have taken His love, been grateful and used the grace He gives us to live His love. The Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish judicial body, knows that the charge of blasphemy will be meaningless to Rome, so they decide to level the charge of revolutionary. Pilate doesn’t like the Jews and doesn’t like what they will tell Rome if he fails in this. Conflicts are bound to happen. The crowd is spurred on to a fever pitch.
Where would I have been in this: Fearful? Agreeable?
The scourging does not appease the crowd and they lead Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. No doubt the soldiers take the longest route so that as many people as possible might view the scene, deterring any thoughts of interference. Jesus hangs on the cross to die slowly ... from His loss of blood, pain from His wounds and the flies and gnats attracted to His sweat and blood in the semi-tropical climate. In God Still Speaks: Listen! Fr. Harold Buetow writes: “Jesus had unflinchingly borne all the lethal mixture of evil of which human beings are capable: betrayal, prejudice, denial, fickleness, misunderstanding, indifference, hardness, avarice, jealousy, ignorance and brutality. He had fully experienced sadness, loneliness, abandonment, and physical pain. In this low point He met His heavenly Father. He had endured suffering for God’s sake; He was now liberated from it and was able to thank God for it. When it was Jesus’ time to surrender His spirit to His Father, He died, the world’s most celebrated case of capital punishment.”
He died for me and you. He died because we really had to understand how much God loves us all the time. He didn’t suffer to take away my suffering or yours. He died to redeem me and you. He died to show us love and how to live love. The famous Catholic French poet Paul Claudel wrote: “Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or to remove it. He came to fill it with His presence.” That is how much He loves me and you.
So I reflect on:
“People expected the Messiah to be a hero figure — one whom Elijah would miraculously deliver at the last minute. Indeed, if Jesus had been delivered from the cross, no doubt the religious leaders who put Him there would have proclaimed Him the Messiah. But Jesus is not a savior who delivers Himself from the reality humanity must face. His life demonstrated the holy nature — made in God’s image — of the human race. And Jesus of Nazareth would make redemptive even the act of dying.
“Watch the scene here: the death of the good man. Allow yourself to be touched by it; let Jesus die for you and for all. Then look at the one guarding the cross — the one who says that this Man was God’s Son. In prayers express your belief and faith in this truth.”
Marking the beginning of Passion Week, Palm Sunday is unlike any other that we have celebrated in the past, considering the pandemic coronavirus we are experiencing. My prayers and private masses are remembering all of you reading these words. For so many of us we are heeding the demands and serious suggestions to maintain a social distance ... to do as much work at home as we can … to stay in. It is so difficult to do but absolutely necessary for us social human beings. So what is the message from the Lord for us today as we begin this most sacred of weeks? PRAY. Prayer is my conversation with God. It is the most basic platform that I can use to develop an ever deeper relationship with the Lord. What does it involve? Listening … learning ... loving. Then, so importantly: Action. Practically this means that since every single person is created in love by God — all are my sisters and brothers — we are all part of the same family. That’s our mission during these tragic days: to love family. We do this, but our minds are elsewhere. The news programs and media list the number of confirmed coronavirus cases … then the deaths: throughout the world … in the US and then in Virginia. I have been reading these and at the same time looking to the end of my life. This is good to do. Jesus was looking at His own life as a culmination of showing His love to each of us.
One of my Lenten books is Meditations of a Hermit by Fr. Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), who was a cavalry officer in the French Army, then an explorer and geographer, and finally a Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg in the Sahara in Algeria. From November 5-15, 1897, he made a retreat at Nazareth in his cell at the Poor Clares cloister or in their chapel before the exposed Host. At one point he wrote about his future on earth, his death, judgment, heaven or hell. His words:
I rejoice in God’s mercy to me. Such are my past and my present. What is to be my future? Is it to be long or short on earth? Happy or sorrowful? Holy as I long for it to be, or full of sin? From which I implore You to save me. No one can know. It will be as You will it, my God. I only ask that it may not be spent in offending You. That cannot be Your will. You have commanded us all to be perfect and You have loaded me with graces and said, ‘To him that has much more shall be given.’ So whatever may be my future, whether long or a day’s span, happy or sorrowful, it must be Your will that it be sanctified. What shall I do that it may be so? ‘Follow me and only Me. Do not come to Bethany to see Me and also Lazarus. Come to see Me and only Me.’ … Imagine yourself as in the house at Nazareth. You have given yourself to Me. I will lead you for my greater glory, for the consolation of My Heart, since that is what you desire and ask for … this life will be followed by death. … You know how cowardly you are, but you know too that you can do all things in Him who gives strength, that I am All Powerful.
The Lord was speaking to Fr. Charles and He speaks to each one of us in His Passion: “I love you so deeply and I have come to show each of you what love is all about and how deep is God’s love for you.”
With the palms the people placed so reverently begins the welcoming of Jesus, ending with the crowd shouting: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” We see this totally innocent Jesus as the suffering Christ, our Savior, our Redeemer. He is a gentle and harmless figure who spent His ministry doing selfless, compassionate and loving things ... whose loneliness and being misunderstood lasted until the end. The Gospel Passion accounts can become old, familiar stories we know so well. Perhaps I can take these along with my imagination and walk the walk with Jesus. I can imagine Him leaving the Last Supper room and going to one of His favorite prayer places, the Garden at Gethsemane ... the solemn stillness broken by the inattentiveness of the apostles who in no way know what is coming. Judas comes with “… a large crowd, with swords and clubs.” Crowds yell and scream and are uncontrollable and mean, unlike the order seen with soldiers. They forcefully lead Jesus away to High Priest Caiaphas, who's mad for power and hence blindly eager to please Pilate who himself is a cruel, bloodthirsty tyrant. Jesus is put in a dungeon, no doubt shackled, left to His thoughts. He knows what will be happening: human fear has to set in. He also remembers what has just happened, the first celebration of the Eucharist. He remembers me each time I have celebrated this sacrament, and He remembers each of you who is reading this blog. It brings comfort and joy that we have taken His love, been grateful and used the grace He gives us to live His love. The Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish judicial body, knows that the charge of blasphemy will be meaningless to Rome, so they decide to level the charge of revolutionary. Pilate doesn’t like the Jews and doesn’t like what they will tell Rome if he fails in this. Conflicts are bound to happen. The crowd is spurred on to a fever pitch.
Where would I have been in this: Fearful? Agreeable?
The scourging does not appease the crowd and they lead Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. No doubt the soldiers take the longest route so that as many people as possible might view the scene, deterring any thoughts of interference. Jesus hangs on the cross to die slowly ... from His loss of blood, pain from His wounds and the flies and gnats attracted to His sweat and blood in the semi-tropical climate. In God Still Speaks: Listen! Fr. Harold Buetow writes: “Jesus had unflinchingly borne all the lethal mixture of evil of which human beings are capable: betrayal, prejudice, denial, fickleness, misunderstanding, indifference, hardness, avarice, jealousy, ignorance and brutality. He had fully experienced sadness, loneliness, abandonment, and physical pain. In this low point He met His heavenly Father. He had endured suffering for God’s sake; He was now liberated from it and was able to thank God for it. When it was Jesus’ time to surrender His spirit to His Father, He died, the world’s most celebrated case of capital punishment.”
He died for me and you. He died because we really had to understand how much God loves us all the time. He didn’t suffer to take away my suffering or yours. He died to redeem me and you. He died to show us love and how to live love. The famous Catholic French poet Paul Claudel wrote: “Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or to remove it. He came to fill it with His presence.” That is how much He loves me and you.
So I reflect on:
- Is death an ending or a beginning? Why does death seem so frightening?
- For a heart of innocence, what could be so breathtaking about the death of Jesus?
- I take time to read Matthew 26:24-27:66 as if I had never heard it before. What resonates with me?
- Where did Jesus get the strength to get through each day? Where do I?
“People expected the Messiah to be a hero figure — one whom Elijah would miraculously deliver at the last minute. Indeed, if Jesus had been delivered from the cross, no doubt the religious leaders who put Him there would have proclaimed Him the Messiah. But Jesus is not a savior who delivers Himself from the reality humanity must face. His life demonstrated the holy nature — made in God’s image — of the human race. And Jesus of Nazareth would make redemptive even the act of dying.
“Watch the scene here: the death of the good man. Allow yourself to be touched by it; let Jesus die for you and for all. Then look at the one guarding the cross — the one who says that this Man was God’s Son. In prayers express your belief and faith in this truth.”
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