A Homily for the Second Sunday of the Passion (Palm Sunday)

​+ We have sung “Hosanna” to the Son of David. We have processed with Him, acclaiming Him as the Messiah, carrying olive branches. We have attended to the account of His Passion and Death. With due solemnity and recollection Holy Week has commenced.
 
A pious practice sees us keep the olive branches blessed on Palm Sunday as precious sacramentals with which we adorn the crucifixes in our monastic cells, our refectory, in our homes, etc. This juxtaposition of the olive branch—a symbol of peace, of life, of fruitfulness—with the wood of the cross on which Our Blessed Lord was brutally executed is powerful and it is instructive.
 
Indeed, this juxtaposition was taken up by the artist who designed our monastery’s logo—the black Pax inter spinas depicted on the central panel of the altar, and elsewhere. Of his own initiative the artist added olive branches to the usual design—olive branches bearing fruit.
 
For whilst the cross is real, whilst the crown of thorns shall be pressed down upon the Sacred Head of Our Blessed Lord, whilst we must in our turn carry the cross and feel the piercing pain of the thorns of the world, the flesh and the devil as we strive faithfully to persevere in our vocation, so too shall we experience that peace, that fruitful peace, that redemptive peace of which the branches we carry today are indeed a sacramental.
 
As we carry them to our homes, as we look upon them mounted on the cross in the weeks and months to come, no matter what the weight of the crosses that press down upon us, no matter how sharp the thorns that wound us, let these branches serve as a testament that whilst, yes, the Passion is a reality in which we each must share, so too (and far greater) is the peace, fruitfulness and redemption which these branches betoken—if we but persevere in following Our Lord on the path upon which we have begun to accompany Him this morning. +