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| Jesus Entering Jerusalem |
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.
