Homily for Palm Sunday

Holy week is the most sacred week in the Christian calendar. The liturgy for the week is action-packed, filled with drama. The congregation are urged to participate in the ceremonies in an active way. We have the blessing of the palms today; the washing of the feet of Holy Thursday; the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday and the lighting of the paschal fire and candle, together with the renewal of our baptismal promises on Easter Saturday night. Everyone is an active participant, actors in the Paschal drama. And it could not be otherwise since Easter Week is about life, suffering and death. And we are all, whether we like it or not, involved in that ongoing drama. We all live life, obviously; we encounter suffering, to a greater or lesser extent along the way. And we will all one day have to face death. These are the great inevitables.

So in celebrating Holy Week, we are not only celebrating the memory of an historical figure called Jesus from Nazareth. We are plunging into a living reality. We attempt to view the great questions of life, suffering and death through the eyes of Jesus Christ. During this week we celebrate the fact that God in the person of the man Jesus took upon himself all that is soiled and sordid in our world. As Isaiah prophesied: "Like a sapling he grew up in front of us, like a root in arid ground; without beauty, without majesty we saw him, no looks to attract our eyes; a thing despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with grief; a man to make people screen their faces; he was despised and we took no account of him; yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrow he carried. He was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace. And through his wounds we are healed."

So a large part of our liturgy this week will be a meditation on the sufferings of God. Because of this week, no human being will ever suffer or die alone again. God in Christ is beside him because he was there before him. But, more to the point, he was there before him, died and was raised by the Father. As the Easter hymn puts it, "He broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave." So, in essence, what we are celebrating this week is our own survival. The historical person of Jesus has given us a window on to the mystery of human suffering. This week is best summed up by the introductory prayer to the blessing of the Palms which we which we used today: It goes as follows: "Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the whole church throughout the world. 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 throughout this sacred week with a lively faith. United with him in his sufferings on the cross, may we share his resurrection and new life."