Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, April 13, 2025
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ
My
dearest brothers and Sisters, today we are gathered to celebrate the sixth
Sunday of Lent. For us Catholics in the Latin West, this Sunday is both Palm
Sunday and Passion Sunday, the beginning of the Holy Week. This is the time of the
year when we pause ….. the same way we do during the liturgy to observe sacred
silence, pray and thank God for this great gift of salvation he has given us.
There is no time of the year in the
life of the Church that is more important than the Holy Week. If we are to
borrow the Hebraic expression of acknowledging that we are in the holiest of
all weeks – we will say: Holy, Holy, Holy Week.
For the
reason we have hope for heaven is because of what we celebrate this week. And this
week ….. things will become ugly …. awful …. and really bad. As we enter Holy Week,
we want to remember how ugly, awful and bad it got not because we want to feel sad
about Jesus, of how much he suffered for us. But to be reminded that this
happened because somebody loves us so much.
If I am to tear the pages of the
gospel we have just read and give it to people who do not know and have not
heard about Jesus nor have ever read a bible, they may find it difficult to
believe this ever happened. Why would a man endure such things ….. For what
reason???
For us,
as we have grown accustomed with the story of Jesus’ passion and death year
after year, it may be easy to overlook the significance and importance of these
events. Because we know how the story ends, we have the tendency to skip the horrific
details of Jesus’ passion and death and proceed with the glorious ending of his
Resurrection.
However,
for people in Jesus' time, it is not the case. Imagine the Blessed Mary
standing at the foot of the cross, alone (almost) ….. she could have been
beating her chest and uttering the prayers, Oh God, o God why have you allowed these
horrible things to happen to my son ….. your Son?
And maybe our own human experiences
are the same. That there are moments when we feel abandoned, betrayed, left
alone, ignored and our prayers seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Thus, many
don't find the value of pain, suffering, hardship and many more other negative
circumstances that life throws at us.
Our
liturgy today and the rest of the liturgies this holy week leading to the
Sacred Triduum, does not just aim that we commemorate and relive Jesus’ dying
and rising, but our own dying and rising in Jesus, which will result in our
healing, reconciliation, and redemption.
We were not redeemed at a discounted rate;
we were paid in full including the exorbitant interests. On resurrection Sunday
as the cross and the rest of the sacred images are unveiled for us, we will see
once again the image of God’s Justice and Mercy on the cross.
Did I
say Justice? ….. Yes! As St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans in 6:23:
“for the wages of sin is death.” This death, in the biblical language is not
just the separation of our immortal soul from our body, but it is our eternal separation
from God.
This is the same separation we
experience when somebody we do really love, and care is taken away from us ….. and
multiply that by a gazillion times. This is when you wake up the following day
and realize that the one so dear to you was taken away by death and the very
things this person does every day to annoy you are now the things you long to
see and experience. And now you live in this reality that they are not coming
back.
If you
are a parent, this is the same experience of loosing a child or a child being taken away from you in a crowded mall and you
do not know if that child is now in some other part of the world being sold to
slavery and you will never going to see your child anymore.
It is
like being left alone on the scorching heat of a desert by yourself. No
familiar faces, no company to talk to and walk with. You are isolated and
separated from all the people you have ever love and care, you are separated
from God. You will be there by yourself. You don’t know where to go, the desert
does not seem to end ….. for all eternity ….. alone. That is the biblical
meaning of death. Dead to our sin and selfishness.
And as Fr. Jerome said last Friday,
there is no forgiveness of sins if there is no shedding of blood. And by dying
on the cross, Jesus has paid the price so we may live. That this curse of forever
be separated from God and from one another has now been lifted up.
The ransom
and the penalty for this curse is his life and all his blood. That is God’s
justice – his death for our life. It is like walking out of prison for the
crime we have been convicted of and found guilty of. But we don’t walk out
because of a stroke of a presidential pen issuing a presidential pardon, we
walk out because somebody took our place.
Justice demands payment for the crime.
And Jesus’ life and all his blood are the payment. Not our death but his death.
Not us hanging on the cross, not us drained of our blood – but his life and his
blood ….. that my friends ….. brothers and sisters is mercy.
On the Cross, we see
the justice of God and the mercy of God. This is the reason why we don’t eat
meat on Friday and also eat only 1 meal on this day. It is because we remember
what happened on Good Friday. It used to be all 40 days of Lent, but now it is
relegated to only the Fridays of Lent. And yet for many, we go through this
Fridays of lent just like any other Fridays of the year. I hope we remember
that as we only have one Friday left before us, this Friday – the Good Friday.
But Jesus in respect to our free will
can’t force us to walk out of our prison cell. Remember that there are two
thieves who were crucified with our Lord on Good Friday, but only one received
the promise of heaven. Did Jesus not die for all of us?
We will
have to make that choice in the same way the thief on the right did. That is to
accept this love from God and maybe again, we may want to look into going to
confession if we have not done so this Lent.
Sometimes, we also need to remember
that God invites us to make a leap of faith as what St. Paul, at the end of his
life has said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have
kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). His faith was trust that life has a goal, and
it is realized in the eternal existence offered by the Creator who made us in
his image.
Today
brothers and sisters, let us start praying to Jesus to get our hearts ready.
Let us ask him to help us not to hesitate to do whatever he wants us to do even
if they are something beyond our human understanding. Even if we are so ashamed
we have not gone to confession for 15 years.
For we now know that it is part of how
God saves us, that is, the surrender of our will just as Jesus surrendered his
will to the Father that costed him his life and all his blood.
The
prison gate is now open and all we must do is walk out. May the experience of
the Holy week renew and restore our faith in God. That all these things are not
empty shows, empty promises, old broken tradition. That we realize our prayers
don’t fall on God’s deaf ears.
May we receive the grace to be a
better child of God. May it strengthen us in moments of difficulties. May we see
beyond our sufferings the victory that lies ahead.
Brothers
and sisters, if this week is very special, then we need to prepare for it. We
need to be ready for it. For the glory of the resurrection does not happen
without Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
This week, we are going to celebrate
the worst and best things that ever happened to us. And let us thank God for
it.
I keep you and your
family always in my prayers. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment