On Palm Sunday, we begin Holy Week, the chief week of the Christian liturgical year. We focus upon the Paschal Mystery of Jesus: his journey from this earthly life through the mystery of death into heavenly life.
“Paschal” refers to the Passover, the passing of the angel of death over the homes of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt (a passing over that spared their firstborn child from death). In a larger sense, Passover refers to the Exodus or liberation of the Hebrews from their oppressors.
Today, Palm Sunday, we reflect upon a paradox of triumph and tragedy: the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the Gospel proclamation of the passion and death of Jesus. In the tragedy of Good Friday, there is the triumph of Easter—Jesus crucified, risen, and gloriously alive among us.
We keep our blessed palm fronds as a daily reminder to welcome Jesus into our hearts at the start of each day.
The word of God from Isaiah is a poem about a “servant” who suffers for us.
Paul’s letter to the Christian community at Philippi quotes an early Christian hymn about God who became one of us, obedient even to death on the cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him.
And the Gospel according to Mark proclaims the passion and death of Jesus.
Thursday commemorates the Lord’s Supper: there is the washing of feet (a symbol of service) and the meal in which Jesus gives himself to us sacramentally in the signs of bread and wine (a symbol of our oneness with God and with our 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.
Saturday, at the Easter vigil, we reflect upon the passage of Jesus from this earthly life through death into a transformative, transfigured heavenly life. The resurrection is a pledge of our own liberation from death or nothingness into eternal life.
The vigil includes fire (a symbol of Jesus as the light who illuminates the darkness around us); the story of our salvation in the scriptures; the baptism of our candidates; the renewal of our own baptismal promises; and the Eucharist.
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 in these services as much as you can.
I conclude with a remembrance about a ship swamped by fierce gale winds off the coast of England in 1875. Among the 157 passengers who perished were five Franciscan nuns. They were immortalized in a poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
As the waters swamped the boat, the nuns stayed below because there wasn’t room enough for them on the deck, and were heard to say, “O Christus, O Christus, komm schnell” meaning “O Christ, O Christ, come quickly!”
The poet saw in their deaths a parallel to the sufferings of Jesus for the sake of the many.
Hopkins concludes with this line referring to Christ: “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” Here he uses the word “easter” as a nautical term, meaning steering toward the east, into the light. That light is Jesus.
During our forty days of Lent, we have been striving to steer toward the light of Jesus, to handle the challenges of daily life.
Yes, let Christ easter in us, abide in us, so that he may empower us to serve like him, and so that we may bear our crosses as he bore his cross for us.
I pray that this Holy Week will inspire us to seek the God who became flesh in Jesus, who through his dying and rising opened up to all humankind eternal life, a God who is gloriously alive among us by the power of the Spirit. Amen.
