Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
April 13, 2014
 
     We are setting out on a journey this morning, a journey that will take us to the very heart of our Christian faith.  St. Paul gave us clear directions for the journey in today’'s reading from Philippians. "Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Though he was equal to God, he thought this equality not a thing to be clung to; rather, he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave."  If we follow St. Paul’s directions in the coming days and put on the mind of Christ, we will not only find our way, we will come very close to him in the mystery of his passion, death, and resurrection.

     And I realize that this is a journey we’ve made before, some of us almost more times than we can count. But we need to make it again this year. We do.  For, my friends, even though the events we celebrate took place in the past, our sacramental celebrations put them squarely in the present – put them in this moment. That’s the power of liturgy: it brings the past into the present and makes it as fresh and new as the spring that is bursting all around us. Liturgy also takes us into the future and anticipates the future as even now we begin to share in the heavenly banquet.

     For a moment, allow me to walk you through this greatest week of the Church’s year.

     Today (“Palm Sunday”), Jesus is right here in our midst.  In our procession, he accepted our acclamations much as he did those of the disciples who enthusiastically waved their palm branches as he descended the Mount of Olives to complete his journey to Jerusalem. Unlike some of their leaders, whose collaboration with the Roman occupiers had compromised them in many ways, these disciples had heard Jesus and been taken by his teaching. They had seen in the wonders he worked the very healing power of God. So they shouted their hosannas. But their hosannas didn’t last. Very quickly, palms gave way to passion -- to Matthew’s telling of the story of the Passion and Death, a story that will become our story as we enter the Sacred Triduum, the holy three days.

     On Holy Thursday evening, Jesus will invite us to the warm intimacy of the Upper Room -- to a wonderful outpouring of fellowship and love.  When the Archbishop washes the feet of some of our fellow parishioners, we will see in a way more powerful than words can express the meaning of the words that I like to think of as our parish motto – the words from Luke’s gospel that are inscribed above the altar of this cathedral: “I AM IN YOUR MIDST AS ONE WHO SERVES.”  And when we celebrate the Eucharist on that holy night we will come very close to Jesus who allowed his body to be broken like bread and his blood to be spilled – poured out -- like wine so that he could become our food and drink: the very source of our life and our unity as a people.

     And then on Good Friday, as we listen to St. John’s telling of the Passion and Death of Jesus, we will meet him and walk with him on the road to Calvary. And following that, in a very solemn moment, we will each come forward to venerate the Cross, and in so doing, we will not only touch his mercy but be reminded in a vivid way of the lengths to which Jesus was willing to go in order to show us the power of love – selfless love, vulnerable love -- love unlike any our world has ever known. It is a love that seems almost foolish, and hopelessly naive, but it is the only love which has the power to overcome the hatred and the violence that hold us and our world in such a tight grip.

     And, finally, on Saturday night when we come together to celebrate the great Easter Vigil we, along with a group of parishioners who for a long time have been walking the challenging road to baptism, will make the great Passover from darkness to light, from slavery to a new kind of freedom.  The light that is Christ will shine in the darkness of this Cathedral and in the glow of that light we will listen to some wonderful old stories that tell of how God has acted in our history from the very dawn of time, and in those stories we will see the pattern of how God continues to act even today.  And then the waters of Baptism will flow over the heads of our elect and those same waters will be sprinkled over our own heads as they -- and we -- are plunged into the mystery of Christ's death so that we can all emerge with him to a new and fuller life.  And that life will be sealed and strengthened when we partake of the Eucharist and come to know Jesus, the Risen One, in the Breaking of the Bread.  Our hearts will be filled with joy and, for the first time in many weeks, we will sing the ALLELUIA, that joyous song which, more than any other, is our true song as Christians!

     My friends, all this awaits us in this Great Week, without a doubt the most important of the Church’s year.  We are never more a parish, never more a community of believers, than when we gather to celebrate these Sacred Mysteries.  I look forward with great anticipation to celebrating these events with you. May they renew us in faith and hope, and may that “mind of Christ” that St. Paul wrote about so long ago become ever more our own mind during these coming days of grace and glory!

Father Michael G. Ryan