Cathedral Family,
As we enter the holiest week of the year, we soberly honor our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. We are all a work in progress. We need this Holy Week to reclaim who we are and who we are meant to be, as God hopes for us.
This Sunday is Palm Sunday, which is also known as Passion Sunday. This Sunday’s liturgy commemorates our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem to the jubilation of the crowds, but then a few short days later…the same crowd yells, “Crucify him!” This paradox of events is a thought-provoking illustration of human nature on full display. When the crowds came to realize that Jesus was not going to be the easy Messiah who would rid them of all of their painful circumstances, they wanted nothing to do with Him. The human heart is fickle! Many of us do not get past the motivation, “What’s in it for me?” The same crowd had not yet seen what Love can do.
Today, we are not so much different. We often only “love” when it feels pleasant and convenient. We only love those who “love us” the way we want to be loved. We often do not want people to tell us the truth about ourselves, others, or the world. Instead, we prefer the superficial mirage that makes us feel secure. We, too, can only want a God who will tell us what we want, agree with our sinful choices, and confirm us in our wrongdoing.
After Palm Sunday, we journey with the rest of the Church to the highest point of our liturgical year, the Sacred Paschal Tridium.
We will begin on Holy Thursday night with the Mass of the Lord's Supper — commemorating the last supper that Our Lord celebrated with His disciples. On that holy night, He washed their feet in an act of service for us to imitate. He then consecrated them in His priesthood, which will continue until the end of time. And finally, he leaves His Greatest gift: Himself, as an act of love in the Holy Eucharist.
On Good Friday, we then enter into His passion and death. The world is left in silence in Jesus’s total act of surrender to the Father’s will. In this piercing silence, we wait with the rest of the Universal Church for the Great Easter Vigil that explodes light into the darkness as we honor and behold Christ’s victory of rising from the dead. He conquers death with life---darkness with light!
Everything we believe in revolves around the truth that Christ is risen from the dead. He is truly risen. Our only response can be a heartfelt renunciation of our sins and a reaffirmation of our Baptismal promises. In the moment our Baptismal promises were said for us by our parents or by ourselves, it was this very moment that Christ claimed us to be his very own. The whole Easter season is meant to affirm over and over our life in the Risen Christ. Easter is meant to reinvigorate our faith, to live out our promises, and to live out our discipleship. In doing so, we allow him to reign in our lives, and our lives proclaim that “Jesus Christ is Lord!”
Please make a plan to make this week different from all other weeks. How will you do it? I believe God will provide us all the strength we need. We must ask for help and then respond. For more information about our Holy Week liturgies and opportunities for prayer, please check for the “Holy Week Schedule” later in this bulletin or on our website.
Let us go forth — into God's future for us.
In Jesus,
Father Christy