The Paradox of Palm Sunday: Triumph and Tragedy

Jesus Entering Jerusalem

I wish we could gather in person for Holy Week. Yet we can gather spiritually for Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter reflections. There’s a link at the St. Raphael Church website. Many of us are physically distant. But the lights will go on again.

On Ash Wednesday, we were invited to treat ourselves to the age-old exercises of prayer, fasting (doing without negative attitudes and behaviors), and almsgiving (sharing what we have). I hope these 40 days of Lenten exercises have reinvigorated us.

Palm Sunday, we begin Holy Week, the chief week of the Christian liturgical year. We focus upon the Paschal Mystery, the journey of Jesus from this earthly life through the mystery of death into a heavenly life.

“Paschal” refers to the Passover, the passing of the angel of death over the homes of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt. In a larger sense, Passover refers to the Exodus or liberation from their oppressors.

On Palm Sunday, we reflect upon a paradox: the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the Gospel proclamation of his passion and death. In the tragedy of Good Friday, there is the triumph of Easter—Jesus alive among us.

The word of God from Isaiah, chapter 50, is a poem about a “servant” who suffers for us (the early Christian community saw Jesus in this servant).

Paul’s letter to the Christian community at Philippi in Greece quotes an early Christian hymn about God who became one of us, obedient even to death on the cross.

The Gospel according to Matthew chapters 26-27 proclaims Jesus’s passion and death.

Next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are known as the triduum (from a Latin word meaning three days).

Thursday, we will commemorate the Lord’s Supper: there is the washing of feet (a symbol of service) and then the eating of a meal in which Jesus gives himself to us in the signs of bread and wine (a symbol of our oneness with God and fellow human beings).

Good Friday, we meditate upon the passion and death of Jesus: the Garden of Gethsemane; the trial; the Crucifixion; the burial; the veneration of the cross; and a simple Communion.

At the Easter vigil, we reflect upon the passage of Jesus into a transformative, transfigured heavenly life. The resurrection is a pledge of our own liberation. Easter proclaims that Jesus is risen, gloriously alive among us. This is indeed the paramount week of our liturgical year, and I urge all to participate spiritually.

I conclude with a story about a ship that ran aground off the coast of England in 1875 in fierce gale winds. Among the 157 passengers who perished were five nuns traveling to Missouri for a new teaching ministry. They were fleeing Bismarck’s anti-Catholic legislation.

Gerard Manley Hopkins dedicated his poem The Wreck of the Deutschland to these nuns. He saw in their deaths a parallel to the sufferings of Jesus for the sake of many.

The poem reads: As the water rose, the nuns clasped hands and were heard saying, “O Christus, O Christus, komm schnell” meaning “O Christ, O Christ, come quickly!”

Hopkins concludes with this line: “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” Here, the word “easter” is a nautical term meaning steering a craft toward the east, into the light. That light is Jesus. “Let Christ easter in us” so that we may reflect his life.

I pray that this Holy Week will inspire us to seek ever more enthusiastically the God who became flesh in Jesus, and who opened up to all humankind a God who is alive among us by the power of the Spirit.

In Death There's Life

Raphael's Resurrection of Jesus

At the 11th hour on the 11th day in the 11th month in 1918, WWI ended. Armistice Day then became Veterans Day now and on Monday, November 11 we honor our veterans, over 18 million men and women in our military.  Thank you, veterans, for your service to our country.

Here's a bit of simple wisdom I like: may your troubles be less, may your blessings be more, and may happiness come through your door. That's all in the Bible, and it’s my prayer for each of you, especially our veterans whom we honor this Veterans Day.

Sunday’s word of God in the book of Maccabees describes the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons. They stood up for their beliefs and died for them. The author may be asking us, do we speak up for what's right?

The Letter to the Christian community at Thessaloniki urges the community to persevere in their discipleship with Jesus. God will strengthen them, the author writes, so they can fix their hearts on God. That’s a good message for us as well.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus and the Sadducees talk about mortality and immortality. The Sadducees, who don’t believe in life after death, use an absurd example of seven brothers marrying the same sister-in-law and then dying. ”Who’s her husband in the next life?” they ask.

But Jesus distinguishes between “this age” and “the next age.” And even Moses had alluded to life after death.

From a Christian perspective, hidden in every Good Friday is the glory of Easter, when God transformed Jesus into a new awesome spiritualized body. The disciples knew him in the breaking of the bread. The resurrection was real, even though they couldn’t name his new mode of spiritual embodiment. And that new life one day will be ours.

Meantime, we have our Good Fridays. Sometimes problems seem to overwhelm us. In trying times, we may wonder, where is God? This eternal question is highlighted in the book of Job, in the Confessions of Saint Augustine, in the novels of Dostoevsky, and in recent best sellers.

As we reflect upon the human situation, we realize that our planet is wounded, so to speak. At times, suffering results from immoral behavior, from misuse of freedom, from tyranny. At other times, suffering results from natural disasters, from an incomplete universe, a universe in progress.
But ultimately, suffering is a mystery. How respond?

First, remember that God is always near us, closer to us than we are to ourselves. God forever seeks to bring us to the fullness of life.

Second, avoid negative judgments about ourselves. To think, I really deserve it, is a form of self-hatred. God loves us unconditionally.

Finally, remember that the mystery of inescapable suffering has healing and redemptive power. Jesus, through the mystery of his death and resurrection, healed us, reconnected us to God in friendship. Yes, our inescapable aches and pains, born with love, can bring forth new depths of life in ourselves and in others.

As we remember our deceased loved ones in November, we may ask, how do we come to terms with our own dying? Some counselors help people cope by encouraging them to begin drafting a letter to loved ones. This may highlight the most important gifts we can leave them: love, faith in God, hope in life eternal, compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude. This is not the end, but a beginning.

Hidden in Good Friday was Easter Joy

Rubens, the Resurrection of Christ

In the Gospel according to Mark, two disciples, James and John, argue over the privilege of status in “the age to come” without realizing the cost of discipleship here and now. Jesus says: “Can you drink the cup that I drink?” That is, the cup of suffering. Jesus concludes: to be a disciple is to serve others. Serving, not lording, is what leadership is all about in our faith community. Good leadership, many would argue, is a potent combination of good strategy and moral character, that is, working to achieve goals for the greater common good and at the same time preserving one's integrity.

Jesus, completely divine and yet completely human like ourselves, through his horrific death and glorious resurrection, re-established our relationship with God. Our relationship with God and one another is at the heart of Christianity.

Hidden in every Good Friday can be Easter joy. Think about it.

Someone loses a job or home, or is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, or sees a relationship unravel, or realizes a loved one has an addiction. The family tries, as best it can, to deal with this “cross” and thereby brings hope, healing, forgiveness and resurrection to their life.

Or a student can’t understand a calculus problem. The teacher, who wants to go home after a long week, patiently walks the student through the problem. After a lot of work and patience, the “lights come on.”

The point is we sometimes find ourselves stuck in a situation – our problems may batter and even overwhelm us. Yet faith challenges us to remember that good ultimately will conquer evil, love transforms hate, light shatters darkness. The ministry of Jesus did not end in the tragedy of the cross but in the triumph of the Resurrection.

In his book “The Night,” a memoir of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel describes how the SS marched all the inmates outside and there hung a youngster – as a warning not to try an escape. As the youngster hung dying, Elie Wiesel, a youngster himself, heard a voice say: Where is God now?

This is an eternal question. The entire planet yearns for God’s healing grace. There is of course no satisfactory answer to the mystery of suffering and evil. Suffering does sometimes result from immoral behavior, from the misuse of freedom, and from a universe in progress, to paraphrase St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

But ultimately, how respond to suffering? First, remember that God is always near us, forever bringing us to fuller life. Chisel in our memories the words of Isaiah, “Can a mother forget her infant…and, even if she does, I will never forget you.”

Second, remember that the mystery of suffering can have healing and redemptive power. Why do I say that? Because Jesus, through the mystery of his own passion in Gethsemane, death on Calvary, and resurrection from the tomb, re-established the relationship we had at the beginning with God.

Yes, our inescapable aches and pains, borne with love, can be redemptive, can bring forth new life in ourselves and in others. The sufferings of Jesus did precisely that.

We can bring Easter hope to someone's "Good Friday" by reaching out with a helping hand, a listening ear, or an encouraging word.