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All Issues > Volume 30, Issue 3

<< Sunday, April 13, 2014 >>

Passion (Palm) Sunday

Matthew 21:1-11 (Entrance Processional)
Isaiah 50:4-7
Philippians 2:6-11
View Readings

Psalm 22:8-9, 17-20, 23-24
Matthew 26:14—27:66
Similar Reflections

"SEALED WITH A KISS"

"The One I shall kiss is the Man; seize Him." —Matthew 26:48, RSV-CE

Many of you who read this have been kissed passionately and have experienced the love and intimacy which accompanies such a kiss. Some of you have also been treated with indifference or even have been betrayed by the same person who kissed you earlier. Imagine, then, how Jesus felt in being kissed by Judas, His betrayer. Even so, Jesus never stopped loving Judas. He even addressed Judas as "Friend" after Judas sealed Jesus' death with a kiss (Mt 26:50).

On this Palm Sunday, we open our lips to receive Jesus in Holy Communion. In effect, we receive a eucharistic kiss from Jesus (see Sg 1:2). Will we kiss Jesus with a kiss of loving intimacy, repentance, and commitment (see Lk 7:38), or will we give Him betrayal, indifference, and a kiss of death? (see 1 Cor 11:27-30) Will we use our lips to tell Jesus "Hosanna" today (Mt 21:9), but ignore Him later this week by living a lifestyle which opposes His teaching and which shouts "Crucify Him"? (Mt 27:22-23)

On Good Friday, in five days, we will have another opportunity to kiss the cross of Jesus in veneration. A penitent woman tearfully and lovingly kissed the feet of Jesus (Lk 7:37-38). In the same way, seal your commitment to Jesus "with the kiss of love" (1 Pt 5:14, RSV-CE).

Prayer: "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim Your praise" (Ps 51:17). My lips are Yours, Lord Jesus, from now on.

Every Child Born Is a Sign

Hope is indelibly engraved in the human heart because God our Father is life, and for eternal life and beatitude we are made.

Every child born is a sign of trust in God and man and a confirmation, at least implicit, of the hope in a future open to God’s eternity that is nourished by men and women. God has responded to this human hope, concealing Himself in time as a tiny human being.

Saint Augustine wrote: “We might have thought that your Word was far distant from union with man, if this Word had not become flesh and dwelt among us” (Conf. X, 43, 69, cited in Spe Salvi, n. 29).

Thus, let us allow ourselves to be guided by the One who in her heart and in her womb bore the Incarnate Word.

O Mary, Virgin of expectation and Mother of hope, revive the spirit of Advent in your entire Church, so that all humanity may start out anew on the journey towards Bethlehem, from which it came, and that the Sun that dawns upon us from on high will come once again to visit us (cf. Lk 1: 78), Christ our God. Amen.

Pope Benedict XVI
From his homily for the first vespers
of the first Sunday of Advent,
December 1, 2007 - St. Peter’s Basilica