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Palm Sunday |
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| Background: We may think of Holy Week as a journey, a pilgrimage, a metaphor for our own pilgrimage through life. We have triumphs and successes as Jesus did on Palm Sunday. We are maligned by false witnesses as he was (no one who lives is not the target of some kind of false witness) we suffer and die as he did, often with the emotion of failure and loss and abandonment that he experienced. Then, having showed us how to die, Jesus rose from the dead, promising us that we will do so too. Having showed us how to live, how to suffer, how to die, Jesus also shows us that death does not have the final word. Life as G.K. Chesterton remarked is too important ever to be anything but life. During the week we strive to understand the pilgrimage of life, to accept its end, and to comprehend that what looks like end is not end at all. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time two young people were planning a summer trip to Europe (we will leave gender out of it lest we be accused of stereotyping). For months they talked about almost nothing else. The read all the books, they studied all the maps, they bought the right clothes and the right luggage so they could travel light. When the day of their trip dawned, they were the happiest young persons in the world. The flight over was rough. They both became motion sick. They stumbled around for a couple of days with jet lag. The immigration and customs inspectors gave them a hard time. Their reservations had been lost. They had a hard time finding an ATM what would take their credit cards. The young people their own age all hated Americans. They both came down with some kind of stomach flu. It rained hard every day. No one told us, they complained, that traveling required patience and sacrifice. Then they began to fight with one another. They did not speak to one another for the last week of the trip. Their month long trip was, from beginning to end, a disaster. Finally they came home. The skyline of their city looked like the garden of paradise. They rejoiced that they were back home and that they were Americans. They told everyone about how wonderful the trip was and how much they had enjoyed all the good times they had together. Then they began to plan their trip for the following summer. |
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