Today is called Palm Sunday because we hear the story of how Jesus once
came into the holy city, Jerusalem, riding over a carpet of branches, cheered
by people welcoming him and waving branches. Today is also known as Passion
Sunday because the Gospel story read today is always the long account of Jesus’
Passion as told by the Evangelists.
Today marks the beginning of the days we call Holy Week. Time still
remains for that spring-cleaning of heart.
Time remains also for quiet, prayerful reflection on today’s passion of
Christ. When Lent ends, we move without stopping for breath into the three days
that are for us the heart and soul of the entire year. The church calls them a
“triduum,” from the Latin meaning “three days.”
On Thursday night we walk out of Lent into these three holiest days,
walk into them singing: “We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” From Thursday night until Sunday afternoon, it is this Triduum. We
will gather here Thursday night and Friday afternoon and then in the darkness
of Saturday night. These are the liturgies we do not celebrate three or four
times each day. We do it once and we hope that all of us can be together, most
especially at the Easter Vigil. That gathering of the church between Saturday
evening and Sunday morning is the life that nourishes our whole year, all our
days. It is when we come to spend some good time in the reading of scripture.
We have to know this: The way these three days are kept is not only with
the liturgies here in this assembly at the church. For these to have any sense
at all to them, the three days have to be kept in our lives. The church invites
us to keep the paschal fast sacred and to celebrate it from Holy Thursday all
the way until Easter Sunday. This is, then, not a Lenten fast anymore, but an
Easter celebratory fast. What is that?
It is a fasting of excitement and expectation, of butterflies in the
stomach because of what is about to happen: Jesus will be crucified after
leaving us the gift of the Eucharist, but then the gory of the resurrection
will happen. The celebratory fast is clearing the mind and the heart to enter
fully into the paschal mystery along with Jesus and each other. So the
invitation to us is to leave all we can of the normal on Thursday, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. Off and on through these next days, we will meet here. You
have your schedules of liturgies and other times of prayer. Let all of us together find again and anew
what is this glory that is ours in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ?
I hope that Holy Week will be a fruitful time of prayer as you
participate in and experience the wonderful liturgies of this most holy week.
Let us continue to pray for our new Pope, Francis I, as he asked us to
do, immediately following his election.
I have one more series of tests before I have my first surgery on April
8th. Many thanks for your prayers, emails of support and the many
cards I have received.
Fr. Phil
