Flowery (Palm) Sunday

http://home.ix.netcom.com/~pugilist/index.htm ^ | 4/4/07

[Balt]

[OK, here's one more post for Holy Week. It's a Palm Sunday homily from last year.]

We all, I’m sure, look forward to Holy Week with a certain degree of anticipation: we are about to relive drama of salvation, to celebrate the holy events which achieved our redemption and made the forgiveness of our sins possible. Liturgically, we look forward to the whole cycle of the Holy Week services, with all of their rich and profoundly moving symbolism, all culminating in the feast of feasts, the glorious Resurrection of Our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The week, as we know, begins in a high note, with our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We bless and carry pussy willows and palms because, as the Gospel tells us, these things were thrown on the ground in the path of our Lord and he traveled into the city. Yet, woven through the services of this day, which on the surface seems so joyful, is an underlying tone of dread which gives clarity to the whole week and puts today’s celebration in perspective. When Mary anoints the feet of Jesus, seemingly out of love and devotion, we realize, as does our Lord, that she’s really anointing him in preparation for his burial, even though she doesn’t know this. And it becomes obvious that the triumphant procession we remember today is really a funeral procession, even though no one there at the time knew it except Jesus himself. They wanted to crown Jesus on this day and make him King; and, he would be King. But the crown he would wear would be a crown of thorns; and his reign as a king would begin with his death.

Now, I’ve mentioned to you before how the life of our Lord is a prefiguring of the life of Christ - or perhaps it’s more proper to say that the life of the Church mirrors the life of the Savior; and we see many instances of this throughout history with the lives of the martyrs; but I can’t think of any moment in history, at least for us as Americans, where this is more clear than today. Some of you may have seen an episode of 20/20 where they featured so called “experts” who claim that Jesus was married; a recent study out of some university somewhere has declared - claiming almost papal infallibility - that certain rare climactic conditions raise the possibility that, when Jesus was supposedly walking on water, he was really walking on ice; the city council in San Francisco passes a resolution condemning the Catholic Church and urging priests and bishops to defy Church teaching; and - the coup de gras - the so-called Gospel of Judas, an ancient Gnostic text that claims that Jesus asked Judas to betray him and which, according to those who say they discovered it, calls into question the whole premise of established Christianity. Of course, what they don’t tell you is that this is all old news. By the third century AD there were dozens of “gospels” floating around, many of them out of the Gnostic tradition. The Gnostics were not Christians; their sect was a mishmash of a variety of religions, and most of their writings were aimed at debunking anyone or anything that disagreed with them. But what is interesting is the timing of all of this: this so-called Gospel of Judas, which is just one more example of a whole collection of Gnostic fictions to come out of the first three centuries after Christ, was discovered some time in the 70’s. At the time, a number of scholars said, “Oh, look. Another Gnostic document,” and just shrugged their shoulders; so, why make a big deal about it and throw it to the media now during Holy Week? Why would the city of San Francisco wait until Holy Week to pass it’s anti-Catholic resolution? Why would a Florida State University professor of meteorology go on MSNBC to claim that Jesus was walking on ice not on water during Holy Week? Why would 20/20 air it’s “Jesus was married” special, or the History Channel do another one of it’s “The Real Historical Jesus” programs now, during Holy Week? Simple: Holy Week is a time precious and meaningful to Christians. What better time to attack Christianity than during the holiest time of the year for Christians? Of course, if you say anything derogatory about Moslems during Ramadan, you’re a bigot; you can’t even draw a picture of the prophet Mohammed without starting a riot somewhere, and then have everyone say how terrible it is that we’re being insensitive to someone’s religious beliefs. But Christianity - and the Catholic Church in particular - is fair game. You can’t criticize Moslems, you can’t criticize Jews, you can’t criticize atheists because atheism is protected by the Constitution (or so we’re told), and you can get arrested for criticizing gays; but you can hate the Catholic Church all you want. Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice of American liberalism.

Now, we could go into an analysis of why Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, is so feared and hated by liberalism in America; but this is Holy Week, and our purpose here is different. It suffices to point out that the fear and hatred that we, as Christians, receive from our fellow citizens is no different than the fear and hatred that our Lord received from his fellow citizens which led to his passion and death on the Cross. It makes sense: truth, after all, cannot be disproved; so, if what you fear is the truth, you can’t attack the message, so you attack the messenger instead. That’s what’s happening to us as Christians now, because that’s exactly what was happening to Jesus when he made is triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

The people there that day, lining the streets of Jerusalem throwing their palms, couldn’t have understood this, but we must. We must begin Holy Week with this perspective: that just as Jesus’ kingship is defined by his suffering and death - just as His power and reign as a king become real in the darkest moments of his passion - so Jesus is present for us even as we face the darkest moments of our lives. We can’t help, as we relive this week the sufferings of Christ, to think of our own sufferings. But it was through his sufferings that Jesus became a king and achieved the purpose for which he came to earth. Just so, no matter what we may be suffering through in our lives, if we unite that suffering to Christ’s, then it will raise us up just as it did him.

It’s not easy to believe, sometimes, when we are suffering and feel abandoned. It’s not easy to think that it is precisely through our sufferings that we can receive the greatest graces and blessings; just as it wasn’t easy for St. John and the other disciples, watching Jesus die on the cross, to believe that their glory and the glory of the Church they would establish, was just beginning.

So, as we relive today this complex scene - the parade of cheers that ends in death - let us contemplate our hardships and sufferings and thank God for them, and resolve to unite them to the sufferings of Christ, and so realize, in spite of how sorry we like to feel for ourselves sometimes, how richly blessed we are by the God who suffered for us.