HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON PALM SUNDAY FROM 2001-2005.

Sunday April 8, 2001 Palm Sunday Reading I (Isaiah 50:4-7) Reading II (Philippians 2:6-11) Gospel (St. Luke 22:14-23:56)

In the Gospels today, we hear, first of all, about the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. In the second Gospel reading of the Passion, we hear about how the whole crowd that was praising God and glorifying Him had turned so quickly against the Lord. We need to look at these different elements.

Needless to say, there is so much to say about these readings that I could be here for hours, but I will spare you that; so we will just touch on a few of the points to highlight some of the things that were going on, some of the things that we might not recognize or understand immediately.

First of all, we hear Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey. We ask ourselves, "Why?" Well, first of all, there was a prophecy that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. So we say, "Okay, that needed to be fulfilled." But there was a purpose for that. Many people will say that in the time of Our Lord, the victor, the king who was victorious, would come into the city on a white horse, letting the whole world know that he was the victor. But if one was in defeat, he would come in on a donkey - a sign of humility. That is not so much the reason. It was more a matter of obedience to God.

By this point, the Jewish people had become very disobedient to the Will of God. They were not following what God had required very specifically in the Scriptures. It is absolutely forbidden in the Scriptures for the people of Israel to ride a horse. Now, on first hearing that, we might say, "Well, that’s kind of a foolish thing." But if you read, for instance in some of the books, like back in Kings at the time of David, they rode donkeys. They didn’t ride horses into battle; they rode donkeys. Now, that again seems foolish to us because donkeys don’t run and the horses are quite fast. We ask, "Why would they ride donkeys? Why doesn’t God allow them to have horses?" Because the only place in the ancient world where horses were raised was in Egypt. Egypt, of course, was the enemy of Israel and God had forbidden that the people of Israel would make a pact with Egypt in order to have horses. And so, at this point in the midst of the disobedience of the Jewish people, while they were indeed riding horses at the time of Our Lord, Jesus Himself, obedient to the Will of God and in fulfillment of the prophecy, came in riding a donkey.

We see the people shouting out their Hosannas to God. But then, within a week’s time, as I mentioned, they all turn against Him. We see those odd exchanges between Pilate and the chief priests; and between Pilate and Jesus. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us. It seems that Pilate is trying to push this away; indeed he was. The Jewish people had a concordat with the Romans. I should say that it was really the other way around: the Romans had signed a concordat with the Jewish people. The Jews had their own law. We don’t hear the Passion quite as explicitly in Luke’s Gospel as we do in the others. As the week draws on, we hear in Saint John’s Gospel on Friday, for instance, all the different elements of the law. Keep these things in mind.

The concordat that the Romans signed with Israel was that the Jews would be the ones to take care of their own people. If a Jewish person was arrested by the Romans, the Romans could do nothing. They must turn him over to the Jewish authorities, and the Jewish authorities would try the person for their crimes. The only person in history known to have been turned over to the Romans by the Jews is Jesus Christ. So, once again, that is the reason for Our Lord telling us three times that He is going to be handed over to the pagans. Why was there a whole group of people following Him, including the women crying and lamenting? Because they had violated their own law. It wasn’t merely that the Messiah was going to be killed, because many of them did not understand that. What they saw was the injustice. Why was a Jew being crucified? Why was a Jew being handed over to pagans? This violated the concordat; that is why Pilate was trying to push the whole thing away. He knew this was against the law. But then you can look at it the other way, and you see this most clearly in Saint Mark’s Gospel. We see that Herod is in Jerusalem at that time.

Herod was the tetrarch. This is not the Herod that wanted to kill Jesus when He was a baby, but rather this is Herod’s son. Herod, at this point, was the king in Galilee. He was now in Jerusalem for some purpose. Therefore, because this governor would have been there, there would have been 1,000 Roman soldiers who would have come with him. You also have at the Praetorium, another group of soldiers who would have been there because of Pontius Pilate and the whole situation as they were patrolling the area of Jerusalem. There would have been thousands of Roman soldiers who could do nothing to a Jewish person. The Jews could make fun of the Roman soldiers; they could slander them; yell at them; throw things at them; and the Roman soldiers could do nothing because, by their own concordat, they were forbidden from touching any Jews.

After all these things had gone on, now they finally had their opportunity. Here was a Jewish man, and He had been turned over to them. To take Him into the Praetorium; to flog Him; to make a crown of thorns and robe Him in purple; to abuse Him in various ways; they now had their chance. The Romans would throw people to the lions and cheer gleefully as they saw the bloodshed. This was a group of Roman soldiers who had not seen much blood for a long time. You can imagine the cruelty and the mob mentality as they went after Jesus. It wasn’t just an ordinary flogging, it was a rather extraordinary thing, even for Pilate. You see his waffling. On one level, he’s trying to sound like he is somewhat righteous; but here he is waffling and saying, "Well, I find this man completely innocent, why don’t I just have him flogged?" If He is innocent, why would He be flogged? Finally, he waffles completely and says, "Fine. Crucify him." Again, this is totally violating everything in the concordat that had been signed.

As we see these different elements, it helps us to understand the cruelty and the incredible suffering that Our Lord endured on a human level. We see in the garden what He suffered as He prayed and the wave of all of our sins came down upon Him. He was crushed. Remember, the word Gethsemane (as in the Garden of Gethsemane), means the olive press. So, the Garden of Gethsemane is the Garden of the Olive Press. It was there that they would bring the olives. A huge press they had with a huge stone would squeeze the olives and the oil would come out and drip over the sides of the press. When the olives were squeezed, the oil would come out of the pores of the olive. In the ancient world, they called that the blood of the olive. As the blood poured forth from the pores of Our Blessed Lord, He was being crushed, squeezed under the weight of our sins. The blood poured forth from His very pores. He was crushed for our offenses.

On Friday, when we read from Isaiah chapter 53, and when we hear the Passion from Saint John, these are some things to ponder and keep in mind. The intense suffering that Our Lord endured. The cruelty with which he suffered. And all of this because of us; because He loved us even to the point of death. He was obedient to His Father out of love for us. That is the thing we can never lose sight of. Jesus’ suffering, His Passion, His death, His crucifixion, is not something we can put at an arm’s distance. It is not something we can look at objectively and say, "What an unfortunate thing. What a terrible injustice that happened." Instead, it is something we need to look at subjectively and personally. As we ponder these things, and meditate upon them in this most holy of weeks, make it your own. Recognize it is because of your sins and my sins; but each one of us looking at it says, "He did this for me. He did it because of me. That suffering is because of me; I did that to Him. It’s not just the Romans, it’s not just the Jews, it was me. I’m the one who turned Him over to Pilate; I’m the one who crucified Him; I’m the one who mocked Him. It is my sins that weighed down upon Him. I’m the one who crushed Him." That is what we need to keep in mind.

Don’t leave it out there someplace as something that happened 2000 years ago and has no bearing on us. Because the Crucifixion of Our Blessed Lord is happening still. In just a few moments, on the altar, Jesus Christ will be sacrificed. Not again, but still. The exact same sacrifice as happened on the Cross 2000 years ago. He is sacrificing Himself now for us and because of us. He gives Himself to us in Holy Communion because He loves us. So, as we ponder these saving mysteries, make them your own; take them into your heart. Walk through them with Our Blessed Lord. With those women who followed Him, weep and lament for yourselves and for your children, because He did this out of love for you.

Note: Father Altier does not prepare his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Scandal and the Tenth Station of the Cross Sunday March 24, 2002 Palm Sunday Reading I (Isaiah 50:4-7) Reading II (Philippians 2:6-11) Gospel (St. Matthew 26:14-27:66)

Today, as we celebrate the Passion of Our Lord, we look back as Christian people and we see the love of God in human form, the love of God as completely and perfectly as it can be understood. But that was 2,000 years ago and it is easy for us to look at the Passion in sort of an antiseptic way. We forget, sometimes, just how brutal and disgusting it really was - to the point where the prophet Isaiah would be able to say in the fifty-third chapter of his great Book that "there was nothing in Him that attracted us." All of His beauty was gone; He was marred beyond human form. And we hear also from the prophets that they "wagged their heads and they spoke to Him, mocking Him" – all of the different things that we heard about: how He was scourged and He was mocked and He was crowned with thorns, all of the horrible things which happened to Him. It is easy for us to be able to look at it from 2,000 years away and praise Him for what He did and to recognize that this act of Our Lord - His Passion, His Crucifixion - is the central act of human history and the greatest act of love that humanity has ever known and will ever know.

Yet in the midst of that, we just need to transport ourselves back 2,000 years and ask ourselves: Would we see it the same way if we were standing there watching it happen? His Mother did. Saint Mary Magdalene did. Saint John the Evangelist did. The rest abandoned Him. They were horrified by what was happening. They were scandalized and they were afraid for themselves. They did not understand and they could not comprehend what it was that He was doing, and they all abandoned Him. In the news, over the last couple of months, you have heard about many scandalous things that have been happening in the Church. The Church is Jesus Christ.

And the Church must be crucified; the Church must endure the Passion of Jesus Christ. While I am not a prophet, I suggest to you that if you look at the Stations of the Cross, I think right now that we are at the Tenth Station in the Passion of Our Lord, in the Passion of the Church. It is not 2,000 years ago that we can look at it from a distance and make it real clean and antiseptic - we are in it. We are now the ones who have to make a decision. Are we going to abandon the Church in the hour of Her passion or are we going to remain faithful like Our Blessed Lady, Saint Mary Magdalene, and Saint John the Evangelist?

When we think of what is going on and then we look at that Tenth Station, we can say that indeed the Church is being stripped of Her garments. But the garments of Jesus, after walking along with the Cross upon His shoulders, would have stuck to the wounds that were caused by the scourging; and when they tore off the garments of Our Lord before they crucified Him, they would have ripped the scabs and the blood and everything else, and what would have been revealed was a torn and broken body. The same is happening now to the Church. If we look just at the humanity of Christ, He is marred beyond recognition. There is no beauty or comeliness in Him, nothing that would make us want to look upon Him. The same is going to happen with the Church. I suspect that we have just begun.

This has all been done very willfully and intentionally by a group of people with the intent of destroying the Church, just as things were done willfully and intentionally by Judas and the high priests with the intent of destroying Jesus. We must remain faithful in the midst of it all and look beyond the humanness. Look beyond all the wounds and all of the disgust, and look at the divinity; keep your eyes focused on Jesus Christ. Remember that, 2,000 years ago, it was the high priests and the Pharisees and the scribes who rejected Jesus and turned Him over to be crucified. Should we be surprised now that there are some among the ranks - even of the bishops and the priests and those who would be professionals within the Church - who are the ones who are denying Jesus, who are the ones who are rejecting Him and who are turning Him over to the secular authorities once again to be crucified?

This is not going to be a quick, easy thing. This is going to get dragged out and it is going to be an agony. And many are going to abandon the Church in the hour of Her passion. Keep firmly in mind the Passion of Our Lord, and ask yourself, knowing what you know today, if you were alive 2,000 years ago watching what happened to Our Lord, what would your response have been? Knowing what you know today, watching Our Lord in His Church endure His Passion, what is your response?

Are you going to wag your head and flap your tongue and blaspheme the Lord and say foolish things? Or are you going to stand at the foot of the Cross like Our Lady and like Saint Mary Magdalene and remain silent and pray and trust that He is the One that He says He is, and recognize that the Crucifixion is the greatest act of love that humanity has ever known and the Church is about to be crucified? But as we heard in the first reading, She has turned Her face like flint; She will not be put to shame because She knows that God is with Her.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

April 13, 2003 Palm Sunday

Reading I (Isaiah 50:4-7) Reading II (Philippians 2:6-11) Gospel (St. Mark 14:1-15:47)

Today in the readings, we see things that are very contradictory. We see, for instance, in the first Gospel that we heard at the beginning of the Mass, the triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem; and then we see by the end of the same week that all the people have turned against Him. But we also see within the long Passion several things that are rather striking that might not stand out to us as Christian people 2,000 years separated from these events, but they would certainly stand out to a person who would be Jewish.

For instance, we hear Jesus praying in the garden, “Abba, Father, if this cup may pass Me by…” And then when it comes time for the chief priests to demand His crucifixion, there is an insurrectionist there by the name of “Barabbas” – Bar - Abba, meaning “the son of the father”. Here you have the Son praying to His Father, and the one they are really asking for to be freed has the same name. So they crucify the true Son of the Father while they are looking for “the son of the father” to be freed at the same time. Now we know, of course, that the hour of Our Lord – which from a human perspective would be the hour of shame, the hour of the victory of evil – is His hour of glory. Once again, an apparent contradiction and yet this was the very purpose for His coming into this world; this was His hour. It was the hour when it appeared that evil had triumphed, but indeed good had triumphed over evil. And so we see even the contradiction of the Cross. What appears on one level to be an implement of destruction, an implement of death, is in fact the tree of life and is the means by which we are made whole.

All of these contradictions, but there is more. When we look, for instance, at what the high priest does when he interrogates Jesus and he declares that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy and is guilty of death, he tears his robe, which is a rather dramatic way of being able to demonstrate that something horrific has occurred. The outer robe of the chief priest was held together by one strand of thread on a seam that went straight up the middle. It was easy to tear and easy to put back together so that he did not destroy his clothing, but it was there so that the point could be easily made if need be. And they all condemned Him to death. At the moment that Jesus died, we are told that the curtain in the temple was torn in two, and we are told very explicitly that it was torn from top to bottom. Now when the high priest tore his robes, he reached down to the bottom and he tore them from the bottom to the top. The curtain in the temple was torn from the top to the bottom – it was God’s way of saying, “Blasphemy!”

But it was also God’s way of being able to show all of the contradictions: The Author of life had entered into death; the true Son of God was now freed; the insurrectionist, on the other hand, was the one who was enslaved to death; the Cross was now the Tree of Life. The Holy of Holies, which was closed to all except the high priest, was now open because the High Priest had entered. It was no longer the Holy of Holies made by human hands, a model of the one in Heaven, but now the model was open because the true Holy of Holies would be open and we would be able to enter through the torn flesh of Our Lord, as Saint Paul makes clear in his Letter to the Hebrews.

I should also mention very briefly the timing of things because we are told that at the time they took Jesus out to crucify Him it was nine in the morning. We hear about the Sanhedrin meeting, interrogating Jesus, and condemning Him to death. There are only two possibilities for this. One, either they met illegally because it was forbidden for the Sanhedrin to meet at night. And also, according to Jewish law, there had to be a 24-hour waiting period from the time that someone was tried and found guilty of death to the time he was actually turned over to death. If that were the case, we would have to say that the chief priests and the Sanhedrin broke the law twice and then in the morning brought Him in, and by nine o’clock in the morning, He had been tried, condemned, and was on His way to be crucified.

The other way of looking at this, which is probably more the way that it actually worked, is that the Essenes – who did not accept the temple calendar because the Pharisees and the chief priests had changed the temple calendar so that everything always fell on the same day rather than having a rotating calendar upon which everything fell – would have nothing to do with the temple worship. And so for, shall we call them, “the Temple Jews”, the Passover fell on the Sabbath (as happened every year because of the changing of the calendar). But for the Essenes, the Passover that year fell on the Wednesday, which means that from our chronology, on Tuesday night when the sun went down, that is the beginning of Wednesday for the Jews and that was the beginning of Passover. So it would be on Tuesday night then, according to our timing, that Jesus would have celebrated the Passover feast and then would have been arrested. The Sanhedrin would have met on Wednesday morning, He would have had the 24 hours, He would have been condemned to death, and then on Friday He would have been crucified.

One could look at that chronology either way because it is not made clear in the Gospel which way it actually happened. But that would be the more fitting way of seeing it, considering that nobody questioned His eating the Passover several days before the Passover was celebrated and that He would be crucified at the exact moment that the lambs for the Passover were being sacrificed in the temple. So we see that Our Lord was actually fulfilling both the Essene calendar as well as the temple calendar and showing very clearly Who He was: the Lamb of God, the Son of God.

And so all of these things that we see in these apparent contradictions become for us the means to life, and indeed are perfectly logical when we see it with spiritual eyes. For us now, as we enter into this most holy of all weeks, we want to unite ourselves with Our Lord, we want to celebrate with Him the Passover. We want to enter into the contradiction of the Cross and find that it is only in dying to self that we will have life. It is only by entering into the death of the Lord that we will be able to share with Him in His Resurrection. It is by becoming one with the Son of the Father and being condemned with Him that we will find the freedom that He offers us. It is only by entering into the tear or the hole in Our Lord’s flesh that we will be able to enter into the true Holy of Holies, into the Sacred Heart of Our Blessed Lord, and there find our eternal rest. That is what is being offered to us. It is the mystery of our salvation, of the redemption of our souls, the contradiction that Someone had to die so that we could live – and that we will need to die to share in His life. On the natural level, it makes no sense; on the spiritual level, it is freedom, it is redemption, it is salvation from sin.

In this week, now, we prepare ourselves for the holiest of all days: next Sunday when we celebrate Easter. But the way we prepare for that is to enter into the Cross, to enter into the mystery of the Passover of Our Lord, to go to death with the Lamb of God, to have His blood sprinkled upon our souls, to eat His flesh so that the Angel of Death will pass over us and we will be brought to the fullness of life.

•This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

April 4, 2004 Palm Sunday

Gospel before the Procession (St. Luke 19:28-40) Reading I (Isaiah 50:4-7)Reading II (Philippians 2:6-11) Gospel(St. Luke 22:14-25:56)

In the first Gospel that we heard today, we hear about Our Lord mounting a donkey and coming into Jerusalem. To understand what was happening at that point, first of all, we recall that according to Jewish law they were not to ride horses; they were to ride only on donkeys. The reason for that, again, is that in the ancient world the only place where horses were raised was in Egypt; therefore, they would have to have a pact with the Egyptians and that was something forbidden by God. So the Jewish people were to ride only on donkeys. Even though at the time of Our Lord the Romans would have had horses, and several of the other countries surrounding Jerusalem would have had horses, nonetheless, Jesus, Who is perfectly obedient to the Will of God, is going to ride in on a donkey. This is also in keeping with the prophecy from the prophet Zechariah that the Messiah would come into Jerusalem riding on a colt, on a donkey.

As He came across the Mount of Olives, the people were crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Now one would have to ask why the people were lining the streets almost as though they were expecting that this was going to happen. The people were not expecting that Jesus was going to come, but rather on that particular day the high priest would come along that exact route riding upon his donkey and holding the lamb that he had chosen for his own sacrifice for the Passover. And as he would ride along on his donkey, there was a man who would precede him playing a flute. A flute would look more like what we would consider a recorder these days, with the holes in it and a reed. The Hebrew word for flute is “the pierced one”. And so what we have is precisely what the people were expecting – but not the way that they expected it.

We have our High Priest riding into Jerusalem, the city of God, on a donkey. We are told elsewhere that it was a white donkey, which is also important because the one who was the victor would always ride on a white stallion. In this case, as Our Lord rides into Jerusalem on this white donkey, He is showing Himself to be the victorious King, the One Who has conquered the enemy. He is the High Priest Who is riding along this path. He is also the Lamb of Sacrifice that the High Priest Himself had chosen for the sacrifice. He Himself then is the Priest, He Himself is the Lamb Who is going to be offered for our sins so that His blood could be sprinkled upon us and our sins could be forgiven, and He is the Pierced One.

So as the people cry out before Him, recognizing Who He was on one level – and yet really having no idea Who He was on another level – but rather simply rejoicing because it was only days before that He had raised Lazarus from the dead. Since the village of Lazarus was up near the area of Bethany and Bethphage (that is, up on the far side of the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem), all the people of that area would certainly have known Who He was. They would have heard of His reputation, and certainly they would have known what He had done just a week earlier. Thus the reason why they would be laying palm branches out on the road and crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

Yet, at the same time, Our Lord, in the Gospel reading today from the Passion, looked at the people in the Garden and said, “This is your hour. It is the hour of darkness.” And so we see that even though He is proclaimed a King, He is recognized as the High Priest Who is to offer sacrifice for the sins of the people, He also has to do exactly what His Father intended for Him to do – and that was to become the Lamb of Sacrifice.

Now we see Jesus at the Last Supper offering Himself sacramentally for the first time in the forms of bread and wine, offering the sacrifice of Himself. But it is not enough just to offer Himself in that form; He needs to offer Himself completely and perfectly. We read in the Book of Exodus that the lamb for the sacrifice must be a male and must be without blemish, and that is precisely what we have in Our Blessed Lord. He is to be sacrificed at the evening twilight. If we read in Saint John’s Gospel (because Saint John follows a different calendar, that is, he follows the lunar calendar instead of the solar calendar), we find that the moment Our Lord is dying on the Cross is the exact moment that the lambs are being sacrificed in the temple. Thousands of priests are in the temple because the lambs had to be sacrificed within a certain period of time while the priests chanted the Hallel Psalms three times. So there would be the chanting of fifteen psalms, five psalms three times, and all of the lambs had to be sacrificed during that period of time. It was quite a frenzied time at the temple. The temple at that point would be less than a mile away from where Jesus was being crucified. So from the Cross (considering that there would have been little or no noise the way that we would have all the noise of cars and trucks and motors and all of the mechanical things, and at that time there was none of that), certainly He would have heard all of those thousands of priests singing the psalms as the sound would have carried throughout. And it is interesting to note that the high priest [Caiphas] was at the Cross instead of at the temple. He was there watching over the sacrifice of the true Lamb of God.

We recall, again, from the Book of Exodus that the father of the family had to procure a lamb for his family. He had to slaughter it, roast its flesh, and its flesh must be eaten. So too it remains for us: the sacrifice must be offered. God the Father, our Father, has chosen a Lamb for His family. He has sacrificed that Lamb for each one of us. The Blood has been sprinkled upon the doorposts and the lintels of our souls, as it was back in Egypt where the blood was placed upon the doorposts and lintels of each of the homes where the Hebrew people were. But that would not be enough. We must eat His flesh. We must consume the Sacrifice that has been offered. So Our Blessed Lord, as He offered Himself at the Last Supper sacramentally under the forms of bread and wine, continues now to offer Himself in the same way so that each one of us, who recognizes Who He is, who cry out our own “Hosanna to the Son of David!” and acknowledge Him as the King of the Jews, we also recognize that He is truly present still among us under the forms of bread and wine, that He is also our High Priest, that He is the Victim, the Lamb offered for our sins, that He is the Sacrifice which we offer to our heavenly Father. And as sacrifices go, so it continues that those who offer the sacrifice must consume the sacrifice as well.

So Our Lord gives Himself to each one of us – His Body and His Blood – for us to receive, not only so that our sins can be forgiven, but so we would be united with Him, united with Him in our persons, united with Him in His sacrifice, united with Him in that threefold office of a priest, a prophet, and a king; and with Him to offer ourselves in sacrifice to our heavenly Father. Therefore, as we see Our Lord in the Garden, our attitude must be the same as His. As we share in His Passion, we have to be willing with Him to say, “Father, if this cup can pass me by, but not my will be done, but yours,” to be willing in all things to do the Will of God even if that will mean for us great sacrifice, even if it will mean sharing completely in Our Lord’s sacrifice.

As we go through now this most holy of all weeks, we are brought more and more deeply into the Passion of Christ. If I may recommend, if you have not yet seen the movie that is out, The Passion of the Christ, I would highly recommend that during this week you go and see that movie. What is portrayed is not as bad as what it truly was, but it is sufficient to be able to demonstrate clearly to us what happened so that not only do we hear the words of the Passion from the Gospel, but we will have the visual images implanted in our memories so that we too will be willing to share with Jesus in His suffering, so that we will have a greater understanding of what He did for us and what the price of our own sins was, so that we will be willing to unite ourselves with Him for the salvation of souls and for the conversion of sinners, so that we will recognize that He is perfectly innocent – but we are not – but in His mercy He forgave us because we knew not what we were doing. Now that we know, we have to make the choice to do the Will of God in all things, to be one with Him in His sacrifice, so that next Sunday we too will be one with Him in His Resurrection and in His glory.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

March 20, 2005 Palm Sunday

Reading I (Isaiah 50:4-7)Reading II (Philippians 2:6-11) Gospel(St. Matthew 26:14-27:66)

In the Gospel reading that we just heard, Our Lord spoke on two occasions, saying, This is the way it has to be in order to fulfill the prophets. This is a very important statement because Jesus Christ came to fulfill completely the law and the prophets. God says through the prophet Amos that He will do nothing in this world without first telling us through His servants the prophets. Therefore, what we can do is search the Scriptures and we can find all the various prophecies regarding the Messiah. We will see that God never said that He would send Mohammed or Buddha (or anyone else, for that matter), but He did say that He would send His own Son. The Second Psalm, for instance, says, You are My son, this day I have begotten you.

When we look at the Old Testament, the Jewish rabbis had gone through with a fine-tooth comb and they had realized that there were 350 specific prophecies regarding the Messiah, 350 different things that needed to be fulfilled. Some of them could be fulfilled by any number of people. He had to be born in Bethlehem. Well, there were lots of boys born in Bethlehem over the years. He had to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. Well, there were thousands of men who rode into Jerusalem on donkeys. But there were lots of other things. He had to be born of a virgin. There is only one Person in human history Who has fulfilled that. He would have to be crucified.

When we look at Psalm 22, which is what we heard in the Responsorial Psalm today, this is a psalm of prophecy. It is a prayer. It is a most amazing thing because one has to wonder what King David had seen or endured 1,000 years before Jesus came, because in Psalm 22 he talks about how they have put holes in my hands and my feet; I can number all my bones; they cast lots for my vesture; they wag their heads and laugh. You read down Psalm 22 and you begin to see that this is not a cry of a man who is despairing on the cross, which is what so many people seem to think when they hear those words: My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? That is the first line of the Twenty-second Psalm. It is not a cry of despair; it is a prayer. It is Our Lord’s way of showing us that what is happening to Him is the fulfillment of what had been spoken.

And so in all 350 things, we see the fulfillment in Jesus Christ. There is no one else in human history who has even come close to fulfilling all of these things. There is only one Person in human history Who has fulfilled every last one of them, right to the point of Zechariah saying, They will look upon him whom they have pierced through, and they will mourn over him as one mourns for an only son. This is, again, exactly what we see.

It is also quite interesting to hear in the Gospel reading the words of the high priest, the words which are placed upon the lips of the people today, speaking as the high priest and the Pharisees, and in essence quoting almost word for word what we read in the Book of Wisdom in the second chapter when they tell him, If you are God’s son, come down from that cross. Recall what they said in the Book of Wisdom that this is what these evil people thought, thinking not aright: Let us condemn the just man to a shameful death. Let us have proof of his goodness and his meekness, for if God is his Father, as he claims, God will save him. Well, they were thinking not aright. They looked at Jesus upon the Cross and they said, Come down from that cross and then we will believe in you! Our Lord, on the other hand, stayed upon the Cross so that we could believe in Him. Nowhere was it ever prophesied that the Messiah would come down from His cross, but it was prophesied very clearly that He would have to be crucified with holes in His hands and His feet, and that He would be put to death – and put to a shameful death.

But it is very interesting that the Church gives to us the reading from the prophet Isaiah, one of the Suffering Servant songs. We hear about how He gave His face to those who spit upon Him, His beard to those who would pluck it, and His back to those who would beat Him. At the end of the reading it says, But the Lord God is my help, therefore I am not ashamed. And knowing, it says, that He would not be put to shame, He turned His face like flint. We condemned Him to the most shameful, inhuman sorts of things that we could think of, but He was not put to shame because He was doing the Will of His heavenly Father.

As we heard in the second reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, Jesus humbled Himself. He humbled Himself so far that it was not enough for Him to be conceived in the womb of a human woman, it was not enough for Him to be a tiny helpless human baby who was dependent on His mother, it was not enough for Him to live a life of poverty and to be ridiculed throughout His entire life, but, as Saint Paul tells us, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death on a cross. That is the humility of Almighty God Who has come to us to teach us what love is.

And so it is only by looking at the Cross and by looking upon Him on the Cross that we have salvation. There is only one means to salvation, and that is the Cross of Jesus Christ. Unlike the chief priest and the Pharisees who said, Come down from that cross and we will believe, we must be like Our Lady and Saint John who stood at the foot of the Cross right where the chief priest and the scribes were as well. They believed because He fulfilled the Scriptures and did not come down from that cross. The Cross, as Saint Paul tells the Corinthians, is a stumbling block to the Jews and it is foolishness to the Greeks. It is a scandal to those who do not believe, but he says: For those who believe, it is the wisdom of God and it is the power of God. Saint Paul had determined that he would preach nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The Cross of Christ is our only hope – there is nothing else. Search the world and you will find nothing that will bring you to heaven except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Search the Scriptures and you will find nothing that is going to bring salvation to your soul except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

How grateful we must be that He did not come down from the Cross. And how in our hearts we have to look at Him Who had been condemned to a shameful death and see that He is not ashamed, but rather that He is exalted because of His humility, that He is brought into the fullness of heaven and brings to the fullness of life all of those who will follow Him to the Cross in what is not in the least bit shameful but is a perfect act of love. So the Church asks us now in this final week, in this most holy of all weeks as we prepare ourselves for the celebration of Easter, that we will enter with Our Lord into His Passion, that we will meditate upon these things that we have just read in the Gospels, that we will look at the prophecies. Read Isaiah 52 and 53, read the Suffering Servant Songs, read Psalm 22, read Psalm 69; see the things that were there that were prophesied thousands of years before Jesus came, and see their fulfillment in Him. Do not wish that He would come down from the Cross in order to believe, but rather be like Mary and John; stand at the foot of His Cross and – precisely because He did not come down from the Cross – believe, and know that there is no other means of salvation than the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

FATHER ALTIER'S HOMILIES PING !

Dear Freepers in Christ,

A Blessed Palm Sunday to all of you. Please check out Father Altier's Homily for Palm Sunday 2002. It is called "Scandal and the Tenth Station of the Cross".

He speaks quite frankly and boldly about the Scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in 2002 and even after that.

I personally find that Homily quite revealing and rich in depth.

In Christ,

Catholic Caucus: Sunday Mass Readings, 04-09-06, Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

**April 13, 2003 Palm Sunday

Reading I (Isaiah 50:4-7) Reading II (Philippians 2:6-11) Gospel (St. Mark 14:1-15:47)**

At least one focused on the Gospel of St. Mark that is THIS Palm Sunday!

Oops!

At least one focused on the Gospel of St. Mark that is read THIS Palm Sunday!

Blessings to all FReepers reading this thread on this glorious Palm Sunday!

Dear Freepers in Christ,

Many Thanks for your comments. A Special Thank You to all Freepers who have posted positive and inspiring commnents to me or on this Thread in general.

My Next Thread will be on Holy Thursday/Maundy Thursday which will only have 2 Homilies preached by Father Altier.

I have checked and realized that for some obvious reason Father Robert Altier O.C.D.S. has not preached very often on Maundy or Holy Tursday or even for that matter on Good Friday.

But, whatever I have got I will post. After, that I will have two back to back Threads for Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday on all Homilies preached by him on those two glorious days from 2001-2005.

After that, It will be a Thread for all the Homilies preached by Father Altier for Divine Mercy Sunday which is my favorite as well as special feast day. I hate to go on and on but I will continue to post Threads of his Homilies for another 2-3 months specially for important holy days.

In Christ,

Dear Freepers in Christ,

A Blessed Palm Sunday to you all. Drop in at this Thread and Check it out whenever you all want.

That is if you like the Awesome and Inspiring Homilies of Father Robert Altier O.C.D.S.

In Christ,

Dear Bearwash,

Greetings.

A Blessed Palm Sunday to you and to your Family specially to your immediate Family.

Many Thanks for all your positive and uplifting comments that you have made ever since I have started posting Threads on the Homilies of Father Altier as well as on other issues connected to the Catholic Church.

In Christ,

P.S. - If you plan on attending a "Latin Tridentine Mass" today, please keep me in your prayers.

I have heard from a number of Catholic Friends who live in Minneapolis that Father Robert J. Altier O.C.D.S. celebrates a very solemn "Novus Ordo" Latin Mass every Sunday as well as on some Week days at Saint Agnes.

http://www.stagnes.net ---Catholic Church of Saint Agnes.

Awesome Recordings of Orchestral Masses that are performed every Sunday Morning for the 10.00 a.m. Latin High Mass by the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale.

http://www.stagnes.net/music-recordings.html

Check it out. It is awesome and inspiring.

Dear NC,

Palm Sunday Greetings to you.

Check this Thread out for all the Homilies preached by Father Robert Altier on Palm Sunday from 2001-2005.

My Next Thread will be on Holy Thursday/Maundy Thursday.

In Christ,

Dear Convert from ECUSA,

Belated Palm Sunday Greetings to you and to your Family.

Are you a Catholic ?

If your answer is Yes, Would you be interested in being added to my FrAltier's Ping List where I will be posting Orthodox Catholic Homilies for Holy Days and Feast days.

Please let me know. In the meanwhile, you can check out the Homilies on this Thread as well as on a previous Thread where I had posted the Homilies preached by Father Altier for the Feast of the Anunciation March 25th.

In Christ,

Dear Livius,

Belated Palm Sunday Greetings to you too. Have you checked out the Homilies on this Thread. Let me know if I have added you to the Ping List.

If not, I will add you. Hope you enjoy these Homilies. I strangely feel that "A Voice in the Desert" will be starting up again in the near future based upon a certain personal email to me as well as something to this effect has been stated on a New Web Page started by them last Sunday.

In Christ,