Palm Sunday / Passion Sunday - LSM sponsored by CAM - March 28th, 2021 - OLF Parish

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Dear brothers and sisters, what a story we are living today! We have been held captive for a year now by this worldwide Covid-19 Pandemic. Behold! Today we have been allowed – to a maximum of 250 people – to return to church. Naturally, we must still observe the public health protocols; so, our church doors have not yet been opened wide. Here, the maximum is closer to 65. Still, we can give thanks to God for inspiring those who govern us to allow us to worship God this Holy Week and for Easter.

Today, the Lord’s Day, is a day of contradictions – we call it Palm Sunday but also Passion Sunday. The palms are for praising Jesus and for welcoming Him as King… while the passion, well that is literally the execution of our God. On one side of our face, we make Jesus our King, but on the other side, we kill Him. We have really messed things up…. What a story!

God must love us a lot to send his only-begotten Son to Earth, and for the Son who became Jesus to accept to take the risk of living among us. We’re a sorry lot, and I include myself in this. Sooner or later, we hurt those we love, and we neglect or forget our loved ones when it doesn’t suit us anymore to please them. We believe in God, but we don’t really expect Him to make a difference in our daily lives. We constantly throw ourselves into taking charge of our situations just because we can’t stand to wait to give God time to act. What a story!

Nevertheless, Jesus knows us very well; so, the big shock is that He loves us anyway! So, this is the great drama of Holy Week. What shall we make of Jesus? This year, how will we react to the proclamation of his passion, his death, and his resurrection? What shall we do about our life, our family, our situations and our concerns? What a story!

In addition, it is as clear as mountain stream water that God invites us to enter into intimate family relations with the Most Holy Trinity. Jesus presents us to his Father and the Father invites us to accept his love, his forgiveness, and his great mercy. The Holy Spirit invites us to enter more deeply into our spirit, and there to welcome friendship with the living God. These three Divine Persons invite us to show our love and gratitude by loving our family and our neighbour as ourselves. How shall we respond? What a story!

And here is the clincher. God asks us to forgive each other all our sins and all our faults, without limit! He even wants us to love our enemies, without necessarily making them friends; at least there’s that. What a story!

This Holy Week let us walk together with the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, Veronica, Simon of Cyrene, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and accompany Jesus on his Way of the Cross; as we pray to God: the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let us take a few moments in silence to reflect on Jesus’ awesome Passion.

https://frgilleshomilies.blogspot.com  

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3/28/21 | Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion - The main event upon which our faith is based... Had it not been for what happened between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, we would never have heard of Jesus. - Homily by Archbishop Seán Patrick O'Malley OFM Cap of Boston Archdiocese, MA

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Pope Francis on Palm Sunday: Let us ask for the grace to be amazed 

Presiding over the liturgy of Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, Pope Francis underscored the sense of interior amazement that marks this celebration and remains with us throughout Holy Week. For the second year in a row, Pope Francis led the celebration of Palm Sunday inside Saint Peter’s Basilica with a limited congregation participating due to the Coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, millions joined the celebration with the customary global television and radio broadcasts and live streaming. In his homily for the occasion, the Holy Father focused his thoughts around the sense of amazement evoked in today’s liturgy and all of Holy Week, since we go from the joy of welcoming Jesus as he enters Jerusalem to the sorrow of seeing him condemned to death and crucified. We hear of the crowds shouting “Hosanna” and a few days later crying out “Crucify him”. The Pope said this contrast reflected a reality where people admired Jesus, but did not let themselves be amazed by him. He said both terms are fundamentally different: admiration “can be wordly” since it follows its own likes and expectations, whereas, amazement remains open to the wonder of others and the newness they bring, allowing our attitudes and lives to change as a result. We have to go be beyond admiring Jesus, the Pope said, and “follow in his footsteps, to let ourselves be challenged by him; to pass from admiration to amazement.”

Homily of Pope Francis on Palm Sunday 2021 HD on YouTube 

Every year this liturgy leaves us amazed: we pass from the joy of welcoming Jesus as he enters Jerusalem to the sorrow of watching him condemned to death and then crucified. That sense of interior amazement will remain with us throughout Holy Week. Let us reflect more deeply on it. From the start, Jesus leaves us amazed. His people give him a solemn welcome, yet he enters Jerusalem on a lowly colt. His people expect a powerful liberator at Passover, yet he comes to bring the Passover to fulfilment by sacrificing himself. His people are hoping to triumph over the Romans by the sword, but Jesus comes to celebrate God’s triumph through the cross. What happened to those people who in a few days’ time went from shouting “Hosanna” to crying out “Crucify him”? What happened?

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