From Royalty to Defeat The Odd Mixture of Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday certainly ranks as one of my favorite Masses of the year. However, I always experience a bit of emotional confusion at this Mass. It begins, as you know, with the recalling of Jesus’ royal and majestic entrance into Jerusalem. We unite our hearts and voices with the Jews who welcomed him into that great city with shouts of honor and praise: “Hosanna, to the Son of David…Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (cf. Ps 118)! There is a great spirit of joy at the beginnings of this Mass as we carry our palms and join in the hymn of praise as we welcome Jesus our king. Very quickly, though, the tone of the Mass shifts gears as we begin to listen to the scripture readings. The focus now becomes on the Lord’s impending suffering and death. In fact, you’ll remember that we read the whole passion narrative during this Mass as the Gospel (this is why this Sunday is also called Passion Sunday). You’ve heard the expression, “From rags to riches…” Well, the liturgy of Palm Sunday can feel much more like, “From riches to rags…” Palm Sunday initiates us into Holy Week. We must take advantage of this holiest of weeks as a privileged moment throughout our year to allow ourselves to descend with Jesus into His suffering and death. It is easy to follow Christ when this means popularity and shouts of jubilation as we do at the beginning of the Palm Sunday Mass. How hard it is, indeed, for us to ask Christ for the grace to continue to walk at His side as He makes His journey of love even to the cross. Most of us would rather just let Christ do the dirty work of suffering and dying for us without having to watch Him endure it. The point here is not that this is some spectacle for us to gawk at. Rather, Jesus invites us to accompany Him in love to the Cross so that we might discover with each step how much He loves us. The repeated actions of others with whom we are in relationship convey to us their level of love for us (or lack thereof). So it is with our relationship with Jesus. He doesn’t want us to miss even the smallest detail of How much he suffered for us so that we might know how much He loves us. I invite all of you to wholeheartedly embrace this Holy Week journey with Christ. One of the most practical and helpful ways of doing this is by participating (in person or virtually) in all of the Holy Week liturgies: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and either the Easter Vigil or Easter Sunday (see bulletin for liturgy schedule). By journeying with Christ in our daily prayer and worship throughout this Holy Week even into the depths of His passion and death, we will better appreciate the miracle of Love defeating sin and death we know as the Resurrection of Christ and we will ascend to new heights of joy.