A Homily for Palm Sunday

+ As we approach the great feast of our Salvation the Liturgy of Passiontide traces out the preparatory events as they occur. For in the Sacred Liturgy the eternal reality that is contained within the historical acts of Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection are lived, are partaken in, here and now. We follow Jesus as He makes His last journey to Jerusalem, stopping to raise Lazarus from the dead – thus ensuring that many of the Jews believe in Him.

With the beginning of Holy Week this following of the events leading up to the Passion of Our Lord takes on a new depth. Joining Our Lord as He enters Jerusalem in triumph the Church nonetheless proclaims to us the entire Passion of Our Lord for the first time. Jesus knows that His true triumph is not in the waving shouting crowds, but on the cross alone with no one with Him other than St John and the faithful women.

Unlike the Apostles, we do not have the threat of death looming over us for following Christ; just a little inconvenience. But through this recounting of Our Lord’s Passion in all its vivid detail, we can follow Him, sharing in His Passion. Nothing is left out. The other three accounts of the Passion are solemnly proclaimed on Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, and Good Friday, with Monday and Thursday of Holy Week re-living through the Gospel passages the events that occurred on that day of Our Lord’s completion of his mission.

We can do no better than to assist as many of these Sacred Rites as possible, to put aside all other things to follow Christ in his assent of Calvary, delving, by our participation, ever more deeply into the sacrality at the centre of this singular act of Christ undertake for the remission of our sins.

But we should not only partake in the rites in themselves: we ought also to spend a little more time outside the Liturgy to allow their content and import to sink into our hearts ever more deeply, for the richness contained in these ancient and sacred rites is unparalleled. +