MAY I COME IN?

Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory! (Ps. 24)

Tomorrow’s Palm Sunday celebration, when the church remembers and reenacts Jesus’s entrance into the holy city of Jerusalem, centers our attention on Jerusalem, where all of the action of Holy Week and Easter comes to a head.

Early this morning I started thinking about Jesus' entering the gate, not of the holy city, Jerusalem, but of my heart. I know that sometimes my heart is like a walled city with all its gates securely closed. But Jesus wants desperately to enter my heart and dwell there. Fortunately, our loving Savior has lots of different ways of getting past my defenses. And He uses them all the time.

Sometimes, for example, while I´m praying, or maybe chanting a psalm with my brothers, He will come and ask me directly, “May I please come in?“ And that’s a beautiful experience, to consciously welcome the Lord into my heart in prayer.

Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!

At other times He approaches the gate in the guise of someone who can use my help, whether that's simply a smile or a good word, or something that requires me to go out of my way for that person. If I have the grace to see that this is Jesus asking to enter my heart, then I can empathize with this person and let him or her past the gates of my heart.

Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!

Much of the time, however, He slips in without drawing attention to Himself, and we recognize His presence only after He's already inside the fortified city. We're all well acquainted with the countless ways He does this. Maybe it’s through the kind action of a brother or sister, or the beauty of a sunset, or the radiance of a little child’s face. Recently I felt tremendous joy while listening to the beautiful voice of one of our students singing. And I quickly realized that I was experiencing the loving presence of Jesus.

Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!

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There are two requirements, though, if I expect Jesus to slip into my heart like that. First I cannot be living blindfolded, with my heart safely secured against the world, with the gates locked. I have to at least be watching at the gate.

Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!

Second, I need to be looking for the presence of Jesus all the time. It's easy enough to see Him in the beautiful and joyful experiences that are part of my life. But what about those painful, ugly experiences
of suffering and evil and death that are also part of my life? How can I see these as signs of Christ's presence? The answer liues in precisely what we are about to celebrate during Holy week: the Paschal mystery.

My Easter faith assures me that out of defeat comes victory, out of sadness comes joy, and out of death comes eternal life. This belief is what lets me recognize the presence of the Lord in my life in all sorts of people, places, and things. as a Christian I expect to find Jesus in the midst of every negative experience. In other words, if I am experiencing Good Friday in my life today, then, the Great News is that Easter Sunday is coming!

So, let us go forth to welcome the king of glory into our lives, singing “Hosanna to the son of David!“

Palm Sunday in Jerusalem

Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!

PANDEMIC PROCESSION

 

As we celebrate the second Lent and Easter under the cloud of the pandemic, with most of us still not being physically present to one another in church, I suggest that rather than just sit and bemoan the fact that we can't go to church, we might spend some time reflecting on the meaning of these beautiful familiar rituals. The following post from a few years ago will help us do just that.

One Palm Sunday morning a few years ago I watched a pastor being set upon by angry parishioners complaining vehemently that the ushers at the side door of the church were distributing smaller pieces of palm than the ushers at the main door. This outrage threatened to color or even define their whole experience of Holy Week that year. During this pandemic time more than ever we need to dive beneath the surface of the rituals and physical signs of Holy Week and Easter to get at their meaning, and their timely message for our suffering world.

PALMS AND PROCESSIONS 

The idea of a Palm Sunday procession originated, not surprisingly, in Jerusalem where 

people could really have the sense of reenacting various events of Jesus’ passion and death in the very places where they had occurred. It was well established by the fourth century: a large crowd, including lots of children singing “Hosanna,” preceded the bishop on a long walk from the top of the Mount of Olives into and across Jerusalem into a church to celebrate mass. 

It’s easy to see how such a ritual would capture people’s imaginations; and by the ninth century there were Palm Sunday processions in Spain and Gaul. The custom would take root in Rome only in the eleventh century. The actual rituals of the blessing of palms and the procession varied quite widely from place to place. The blessing of the palms could be very elaborate, for example, while in some places the bishop would imitate Christ by riding in procession on a donkey. In 2011 on Palm Sunday I posted some thoughts about the custom in some countries of having a statue of Christ on a donkey that was rolled along in the procession.

MISLEADING RITUALS

The detailed ritual re-enacting of various sacred actions described in the gospel, begun in Jerusalem and spreading throughout the Christian world, while it is appealing to many people, also poses a danger: we can begin to think of each episode as a separate stand-alone event without seeing it as part of the single “paschal mystery” of suffering-death-resurrection.

A good example of this unfortunate splitting up of the paschal mystery is the popular devotion called the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” These meditations follow Jesus’ passion from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate through his death and burial, and end (incredibly!) with Jesus’ lying dead in the tomb. To stop the story at that point is not only misleading, it’s almost blasphemous. Worse, during this horrible time of Covid-19, it implies that you and I can or should look at our own suffering and pain apart from Jesus’ triumphant victory over suffering and death at Easter. That’s real bad theology! Fortunately, when the stations are celebrated in public at present, the service often ends with a sort of “fifteenth station,” a brief meditation on the resurrection – i.e. the event which gives all of the events of Christ’s suffering and death their ultimate MEANING.

A similar unfortunate separation of the resurrection from the suffering and death of Christ is reflected in the history of the so-called “holy triduum.”

THE SACRED TRIDUUM

The expression “holy triduum” or “sacred triduum” originally referred to the three days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Easter was an integral and essential part of the “holy week” celebration. 

Saint Augustine, for instance, refers to this triduum in the fifth century. Toward the middle of the seventh century, however, a commemoration of the Last Supper was introduced on Holy Thursday at Rome (where that day had previously been mostly the day for reconciliation of penitents). This new commemoration caused an unfortunate shifting of days: the “triduum” then became Thursday-Friday-Saturday, and Easter was cut completely out of the picture! The triduum became a self-contained unit involving only Jesus’ suffering and death.

This new arrangement is misleading and could very easily distract at least some people from the full MEANING of Christ’s suffering and death (which, after all mean nothing without the resurrection). The church has revised her rituals and her vocabulary in recent years to try to counter that misconception. The official language in the church’s calendar, for example, now refers to “the Easter Triduum of the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection,” which begins only with the evening mass of the Lord’s Supper, thus restoring the original unity of suffering and resurrection.

PALMS AND THE PANDEMIC 

The ceremonies of Palm Sunday can still be misunderstood in that fragmented way mentioned above. 

Try instead to consider Palm Sunday from the original perspective in which the events of Holy Week including Easter were not seen as reenactments of a disjointed series of events but rather as the celebration of a single unity known as the “paschal event.” Here, too, the church since Vatican II has helped us to correct our vision by revising the rituals of Palm Sunday. First, note that its official name is no longer “Palm Sunday” but “Palm Sunday of The Lord's Passion.” The preceding Sunday, formerly called "Passion Sunday" has been given back its original name, “The Fifth Sunday of Lent.” 

Centuries ago the Church began emphasizing Christ's sufferings and so pushed "Passiontide" further back into Lent, usurping the Fifth Sunday and renaming it "Passion Sunday." The Sundays in Lent, however, are clearly intended to prepare us for the resurrection. This idea is obvious when you notice that the gospel for the Fifth Sunday (that we used to call "Passion Sunday") tells the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Sounds like a resurrection theme to me!

Secondly, besides the name change, there are the various prayers, blessings and options for the procession that now help us to focus on the more important theme of the Palm Sunday ritual, the procession. The actual blessing of the palms is limited to a brief introduction and a short prayer of blessing, teaching us that “Palm Sunday” is not about the blessing and carrying of palms that are to be brought home as almost magical tokens disconnected from anything about the Paschal mystery.

The true perspective is reflected in the fact that the blessing of the palms should be held someplace besides the sanctuary, preferably outside the church building, so that there can be a procession. There are even a couple of options for the entry into the church so as to encourage the use of a procession even in less convenient circumstances. The emphasis is where it should be: we as the People of God are accompanying the Messiah on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem where he will suffer and die and RISE again.

Thirdly, the sacramentary helps us to focus on the paschal mystery as a whole by opening the ceremonies of Palm Sunday with the priest's saying these words:

“Dear friends in Christ, for five weeks of Lent we have been preparing, by works of charity and self-sacrifice, for the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery. Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the whole Church throughout the word, Christ entered in triumph into his own city, to complete his work as our Messiah: to suffer, to die, and to RISE AGAIN. Let us remember with devotion this entry which began his saving work and follow him with a lively faith. United with him in his suffering on the cross, may we share his resurrection and new life.”

Notice the various emphases:
1. We have been preparing to celebrate the “paschal mystery” (passion-death-resurrection as a single event).
2. We are doing this as a community, in union with the Church throughout the world. (Maybe this is easier to imagine when you're watching it on the worldwide web?)
3. Christ is about to complete his Messianic work “to suffer, to die, and to rise again.”

A fourth help to keeping focused on the unity of Holy Week and Easter is found in the mass readings. During the mass we will listen to the reading of the passion, but this is preceded by the second reading from Philippians that includes these lines that combine the passion and the resurrection:

“he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11).

THIS YEAR'S PROCESSION

Normally I preside at the Palm Sunday mass at a church in one of the seedier neighborhoods in Newark. In our procession are many Spanish-speaking immigrants, some suburban white folks who come to help the sisters serve Sunday dinner to the poor, some homeless and hungry people, along with AIDS patients and recovering addicts. It’s these last folks that truly appreciate knowing that we are going with Jesus not just to SUFFER with him on Friday; no, we are very definitely walking with Jesus in order also to RISE again with him on Easter Sunday. 

Since this year's procession will have to be virtual, it will be easy to imagine the countless Christians walking together waving palms: The crowd will be made up of the same vast variety as the one I'm used to, except that this year there will be a lot more people who are suffering: grieving for loved ones lost to Covid-19, suffering from the lack of physical contact with friends and relatives, depressed and discouraged because of all the restrictions during the past year. The procession will be filled with folks who truly need to know that we are walking with Jesus not just to suffer with him on Good Friday but walking with Him to Easter morning when He rises triumphant over sin, suffering and death -- and brings us all with him. 

I hope you'll join your voice to the rest of ours in welcoming our Savior, singing 

Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

Whether we are in church or at home, may the worldwide experience of suffering and death this year be a time of special grace for all of us, and may the Church's message ring out clearly across the globe: Good Friday is not separate from Easter Sunday, but is only the first step on our journey to salvation.

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IT'S NOT ABOUT THE PALMS

...

PALMS AND PROCESSIONS 

It seems a good idea to take a few minutes' rest from the 24-hour news cycle in order to turn our attention to the meaning of the greatest news story ever and the rituals that the Church invites us to participate in during the coming week. The following are some ideas I posted in 2012.

The idea of a Palm Sunday procession originated, not surprisingly, in Jerusalem where 

people could really have the sense of re-enacting various events of Jesus’ passion and death in the very places where they had occurred. It was well established by the fourth century: a large crowd, including lots of children singing “Hosanna,” preceded the bishop on a long walk from the top of the Mount of Olives into and across Jerusalem into a church to celebrate mass. It’s easy to see how such a ritual would capture people’s imaginations; and by the ninth century there were Palm Sunday processions in Spain and Gaul. The custom would take root in Rome only in the eleventh century. The actual rituals of the blessing of palms and the procession varied quite widely from place to place. The blessing of the palms could be very elaborate, for example, while in some places the bishop would imitate Christ by riding in procession on a donkey. Last year on Palm Sunday I posted some thoughts about the custom in some countries of having a statue of Christ on a donkey that was rolled along in the procession.

MISLEADING RITUALS

The detailed ritual re-enacting of various sacred actions of the gospel, begun in Jerusalem and spreading throughout the Christian world, while it is appealing to many people, also poses a danger: we can begin to think of each episode as a separate stand-alone event without seeing it as part of the single “paschal mystery” of suffering-death-resurrection.

A good example of this unfortunate splitting up of the paschal mystery is the popular devotion called the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” These meditations follow Jesus’ passion from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate through his death and burial, and end (incredibly!) with Jesus’ lying dead in the tomb. To stop the story at that point is not only misleading, it’s almost blasphemous. Worse, it implies that you and I can or should look at our own suffering and pain apart from Jesus’ triumphant victory over suffering and death at Easter. That’s real bad theology! Presently when the stations are celebrated in public, the service often ends with a sort of “fifteenth station,” a brief meditation on the resurrection – i.e. the event which gives all of the events of Christ’s suffering and death their ultimate MEANING.

A similar unfortunate separation of the resurrection from the suffering and death of Christ is reflected in the history of the so-called “holy triduum.”

THE SACRED TRIDUUM

The expression “holy triduum” or “sacred triduum” originally referred to the three days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Easter was an integral and essential part of the “holy week” celebration. Saint Augustine, for instance, refers to this triduum in the fifth century. Toward the middle of the seventh century, however, a commemoration of the Last Supper was introduced on Holy Thursday at Rome (where that day had previously been mostly the day for reconciliation of penitents). This new commemoration caused an unfortunate shifting of days: the “triduum” then became Thursday-Friday-Saturday, and Easter was cut completely out of the picture! The triduum became a self-contained unit involving only Jesus’ suffering and death.

This new arrangement is misleading and could very easily distract at least some people from the full MEANING of Christ’s suffering and death (which, after all mean nothing without the resurrection). The church has revised her rituals and her language in recent years to try to counter that misconception. The official language in the church’s calendar, for example, now refers to “the Easter Triduum of the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection,” which begins only with the evening mass of the Lord’s Supper, thus restoring the original unity of suffering and resurrection.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PALM BRANCHES

The ceremonies of Palm Sunday can still be misunderstood in that fragmented way mentioned above by making the blessed palms the center of attention. I once saw a pastor being set upon by angry parishioners complaining vehemently that the ushers at the side door of the church were distributing smaller pieces of palm than the ushers at the main door. This outrage would color or even define their whole experience of Holy Week that year!

Try to consider Palm Sunday from the original perspective in which the events of Holy Week including Easter were not seen as reenactments of a disjointed series of events but rather as the celebration of a single unity known as the “paschal event.” Here, too, the church since Vatican II has helped us to correct our vision by revising the rituals of Palm Sunday. First, note that its official name is no longer “Palm Sunday” but “Palm Sunday of The Lord's Passion.” The preceding Sunday, formerly called "Passion Sunday" has been given back its original name, “The Fifth Sunday of Lent.” Centuries ago the Church began emphasizing Christ's sufferings and so pushed "passiontide" further back into Lent, usurping the Fifth Sunday and naming it "Passion Sunday." The Sundays in Lent, however, are clearly intended to prepare us for the resurrection. This idea is obvious when you notice that the gospel for the Fifth Sunday (that we used to call "Passion Sunday") tells the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Sounds like a resurrection theme to me!

Secondly, besides the name change, there are the various prayers, blessings and options for the procession that now help us to focus on the more important theme of the Palm Sunday ritual, the procession. The actual blessing of the palms is limited to a brief introduction and a short prayer of blessing, teaching us that “Palm Sunday” is not about the blessing and carrying of palms that are to be brought home as almost magical tokens disconnected from anything about the Paschal mystery.

The true perspective is reflected in the fact that the blessing of the palms should be held someplace besides the sanctuary, preferably outside the church building, so that there can be a procession. There are even a couple of options for the entry into the church so as to encourage the use of a procession even in less convenient circumstances. The emphasis is where it should be: we as the People of God are accompanying the Messiah on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem where he will suffer and die and RISE again.

Thirdly, the sacramentary helps us to focus on the paschal mystery as a whole by opening the ceremonies of Palm Sunday with the priest's saying these words:

“Dear friends in Christ, for five weeks of Lent we have been preparing, by works of charity and self-sacrifice, for the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery. Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the whole Church throughout the word, Christ entered in triumph into his own city, to complete his work as our Messiah: to suffer, to die, and to RISE AGAIN. Let us remember with devotion this entry which began his saving work and follow him with a lively faith. United with him in his suffering on the cross, may we share his resurrection and new life.”

Notice the various emphases:
1. We have been preparing to celebrate the “paschal mystery” (passion-death-resurrection as a single event).
2. We are doing this as a community, in union with the Church throughout the world.
3. Christ is about to complete his Messianic work “to suffer, to die, and to rise again.”

A fourth help to keeping focused on the unity of Holy Week and Easter is found in the mass readings. During the mass we will listen to the reading of the passion, but this is preceded by the second reading from Philippians that includes these lines that combine the passion and the resurrection:

“he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11).

MY SCRUFFY PROCESSION

So when I preside at the Palm Sunday mass tomorrow morning in one of the seedier neighborhoods in Newark I will be conscious of marching up to Jerusalem with Jesus in company with the whole Church throughout the world. In our procession will be many Spanish-speaking immigrants, some suburban white folks who come to help the sisters serve Sunday dinner to the poor, and there will be some homeless and hungry people, too, along with AIDS patients and recovering addicts. It’s these last folks that will truly appreciate knowing that we are going with Jesus not just to SUFFER with him on Friday; no, we are very definitely walking with Jesus in order also to RISE again with him on Easter Sunday. And we’ll all join our voices in welcoming our Savior, singing 

Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

.

Romare Bearden  "Palm Sunday Procession" (1967)

....

. 

PALM SUNDAY

WOES OF A MODERN MONK

Medieval monks may have had an occasional shortage of vellum to write on (that's why they often took an existing manuscript and scratched the writing off so that they could re-use the scroll). But one problem they didn't have was the computer network being invaded by a virus and shutting down for a couple of days. So I've managed to borrow this laptop and its Verizon MiFi which doesn't depend on the local area network. But this will need to be short.

CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY

I invite you to scroll down to the "labels" column to the left, and click on "Palm Sunday." You'll find there two reflections on Palm Sunday from previous years, one rather lengthy and detailed, the other more modest in scope, but both rather worth reading, I think.

They say that the network will come back to life in three days.

Have a blessed Holy Week!

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE PALMS

...

PALMS AND PROCESSIONS

The idea of a Palm Sunday procession originated, not surprisingly, in Jerusalem where people could really have the sense of re-enacting various events of Jesus’ passion and death in the very places where they had occurred. It was well established by the fourth century: a large crowd, including lots of children singing “Hosanna,” preceded the bishop on a long walk from the top of the Mount of Olives into and across Jerusalem into a church to celebrate mass. It’s easy to see how such a ritual would capture people’s imaginations; and by the ninth century there were Palm Sunday processions in Spain and Gaul. The custom would take root in Rome only in the eleventh century. The actual rituals of the blessing of palms and the procession varied quite widely from place to place. The blessing of the palms could be very elaborate, for example, while in some places the bishop would imitate Christ by riding in procession on a donkey. Last year on Palm Sunday I posted some thoughts about the custom in some countries of having a statue of Christ on a donkey that was rolled along in the procession.

MISLEADING RITUALS

The detailed ritual re-enacting of various sacred actions of the gospel, begun in Jerusalem and spreading throughout the Christian world, while it is appealing to many people, also poses a danger: we can begin to think of each episode as a separate stand-alone event without seeing it as part of the single “paschal mystery” of suffering-death-resurrection.

A good example of this unfortunate splitting up of the paschal mystery is the popular devotion called the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” These meditations follow Jesus’ passion from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate through his death and burial, and end (incredibly!) with Jesus’ lying dead in the tomb. To stop the story at that point is not only misleading, it’s almost blasphemous. Worse, it implies that you and I can or should look at our own suffering and pain apart from Jesus’ triumphant victory over suffering and death at Easter. That’s real bad theology! Presently when the stations are celebrated in public, the service often ends with a sort of “fifteenth station,” a brief meditation on the resurrection – i.e. the event which gives all of the events of Christ’s suffering and death their ultimate MEANING.

A similar unfortunate separation of the resurrection from the suffering and death of Christ is reflected in the history of the so-called “holy triduum.”

THE SACRED TRIDUUM

The expression “holy triduum” or “sacred triduum” originally referred to the three days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Easter was an integral and essential part of the “holy week” celebration. Saint Augustine, for instance, refers to this triduum in the fifth century. Toward the middle of the seventh century, however, a commemoration of the Last Supper was introduced on Holy Thursday at Rome (where that day had previously been mostly the day for reconciliation of penitents). This new commemoration caused an unfortunate shifting of days: the “triduum” then became Thursday-Friday-Saturday, and Easter was cut completely out of the picture! The triduum became a self-contained unit involving only Jesus’ suffering and death.

This new arrangement is misleading and could very easily distract at least some people from the full MEANING of Christ’s suffering and death (which, after all mean nothing without the resurrection). The church has revised her rituals and her language in recent years to try to counter that misconception. The official language in the church’s calendar, for example, now refers to “the Easter Triduum of the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection,” which begins only with the evening mass of the Lord’s Supper, thus restoring the original unity of suffering and resurrection.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PALM BRANCHES

The ceremonies of Palm Sunday can still be misunderstood in that fragmented way mentioned above by making the blessed palms the center of attention. I once saw a pastor being set upon by angry parishioners complaining vehemently that the ushers at the side door of the church were distributing smaller pieces of palm than the ushers at the main door. This outrage would color or even define their whole experience of Holy Week that year!

Try to consider Palm Sunday from the original perspective in which the events of Holy Week including Easter were not seen as reenactments of a disjointed series of events but rather as the celebration of a single unity known as the “paschal event.” Here, too, the church since Vatican II has helped us to correct our vision by revising the rituals of Palm Sunday. First, note that its official name is no longer “Palm Sunday” but “Palm Sunday of The Lord's Passion.” The preceding Sunday, formerly called "Passion Sunday" has been given back its original name, “The Fifth Sunday of Lent.” Centuries ago the Church began emphasizing Christ's sufferings and so pushed "passiontide" further back into Lent, usurping the Fifth Sunday and naming it "Passion Sunday." The Sundays in Lent, however, are clearly intended to prepare us for the resurrection. This idea is obvious when you notice that the gospel for the Fifth Sunday (that we used to call "Passion Sunday") tells the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Sounds like a resurrection theme to me!

Secondly, besides the name change, there are the various prayers, blessings and options for the procession that now help us to focus on the more important theme of the Palm Sunday ritual, the procession. The actual blessing of the palms is limited to a brief introduction and a short prayer of blessing, teaching us that “Palm Sunday” is not about the blessing and carrying of palms that are to be brought home as almost magical tokens disconnected from anything about the Paschal mystery.

The true perspective is reflected in the fact that the blessing of the palms should be held someplace besides the sanctuary, preferably outside the church building, so that there can be a procession. There are even a couple of options for the entry into the church so as to encourage the use of a procession even in less convenient circumstances. The emphasis is where it should be: we as the People of God are accompanying the Messiah on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem where he will suffer and die and RISE again.

Thirdly, the sacramentary helps us to focus on the paschal mystery as a whole by opening the ceremonies of Palm Sunday with the priest's saying these words:

“Dear friends in Christ, for five weeks of Lent we have been preparing, by works of charity and self-sacrifice, for the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery. Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the whole Church throughout the word, Christ entered in triumph into his own city, to complete his work as our Messiah: to suffer, to die, and to RISE AGAIN. Let us remember with devotion this entry which began his saving work and follow him with a lively faith. United with him in his suffering on the cross, may we share his resurrection and new life.”

Notice the various emphases:
1. We have been preparing to celebrate the “paschal mystery” (passion-death-resurrection as a single event).
2. We are doing this as a community, in union with the Church throughout the world.
3. Christ is about to complete his Messianic work “to suffer, to die, and to rise again.”

A fourth help to keeping focused on the unity of Holy Week and Easter is found in the mass readings. During the mass we will listen to the reading of the passion (this year it is Matthew’s account) but this is preceded by the second reading from Philippians that includes these lines that combine the passion and the resurrection:

“he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11).

MY SCRUFFY PROCESSION

So when I preside at the Palm Sunday mass tomorrow morning in one of the seediest neighborhoods in Newark I will be conscious of marching up to Jerusalem with Jesus in company with the whole Church throughout the world. In our procession will be many Spanish-speaking immigrants, some suburban white folks who come to help the sisters serve Sunday dinner to the poor, and there will be some homeless and hungry people, too, along with AIDS patients and recovering addicts. It’s these last folks that will truly appreciate knowing that we are going with Jesus not just to SUFFER with him on Friday; no, we are very definitely walking with Jesus in order also to RISE again with him on Easter Sunday. And we’ll all join our voices in welcoming our Savior, singing

Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

.

.....Romare Bearden Palm Sunday Procession (1967-1968)

.

LEARNING FROM THE DONKEY

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THE MEANING OF THE PALM SUNDAY DONKEY

Underlying the accounts of Jesus’ triumphal entry onto Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is a poetic oracle from the prophet Zechariah:

“Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he Meek, and riding on an ass" (Zech. 9:9). Only Matthew makes specific reference to this oracle, but all of the gospels have the crowds welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with all the trappings of a king: the cloaks thrown on the ground, the palm branches, the acclamation of “Hosanna to the Son of David.”

The donkey Jesus was riding is a popular part of the Palm Sunday imagery. Many churches in Europe would have a four-wheeled statue of Jesus riding on a donkey, that was the central focus of the Palm Sunday procession. (The Germans call it a "Palmesel", "Palm Donkey") The little donkey was meant to send a message but most of the people evidently missed it : a king who is going into battle rides a horse, not a donkey; Jesus’ donkey is not so much a sign of his humility as it is of his mission of peace. Luke even has the crowds proclaim

“Blessed is the king Who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven And glory in the highest” (Lk 19:39).

AN UNEXPECTED KIND OF KING But peace was not the first thing on the mind of most first century Palestinian Jews. They had been smarting under foreign domination for centuries, most recently the Roman Empire, and they were ready for a revolt. The figure of the new King David that had been promised them had gotten combined with that of the messiah and became a military king-messiah who would deliver the people from the power of the Romans.

The crowds who acclaimed this rabbi on the donkey as “Son of David” and “king” had not picked up on or soon forgot the message of the donkey. We’re all like that, I guess – we’re deliberately obtuse when it comes to things we ardently wish for: We don’t see things that we don’t want to see, and we see things that aren’t there but we wish were. The crowds would soon fall away from this “Son of David” when he showed himself ineffective and unwilling to rally the people to political action. What God had in mind and what God was actually doing in the person of Jesus was far greater than anything a military liberator could ever accomplish, but the people had their minds and hearts set on a political-military deliverer and so missed the true gift that the Lord was giving them. How often do you and I miss the gift that the Lord wants to give us because we’re not looking for it but are expecting something that fits our own plans, desires or dreams? How many times have we been unable to accept some gift from God because it was contrary to what we were hoping for? May the little Palm Sunday donkey be a reminder to us that while God’s gifts are not always what we expect, they are always what we need.

.

............................A Palmesel in Puch, Germany

...