Palm Sunday

will I lay my cloak before you,

when they arrest you on olive mountain,

or pull it tighter around me,

fading into the ranks of the deserters;

will I shout

‘Blessed is the one who comes

in the name of the Lord!’

when they parade you

before the authorities,

or will I tell any one – and every one – around me

I never met you in my life;

will I lay my palm branches at your feet,

as they march you to Calvary,

or use them to put more stripes

on your bloody back;

will I run behind you

when they carry you to the tomb,

or turn away

as the ashes of my hopes

are rubbed into the

wounds in my heart?

Bridgeport United Church of Christ

O my Jesus, I want to spend this Holy Week with You, in the company of Veronica, Simon, the women of Jerusalem, the good thief, Your beloved disciple John, Your Blessed Mother Mary, and all those who followed You in Your saving Passion.  I want to help You as they did, to comfort, love and adore You.  But my heart is fickle, dear Lord, and I am selfish and afraid.  I may very well falter and turn against you, as did Pilate, Peter, Judas, the blood-thirsty crowd, the bestial soldiers, and so many others who denied, betrayed, reviled and tormented You.  Then may I not despair but, with confidence and hope, run to You, my King and my God.  Blessed are You who have come to us so rich in love and mercy.  Hosanna in the highest!  Amen.

Going Up to Jerusalem

"Jesus went ahead of everyone going up to Jerusalem." Luke 19:28

Being Christian means seeing the way of Jesus Christ as the right way of being human -- as that way that leads to the goal, to a humanity that is fully realized and authentic...being Christian is a journey, or better: It is a pilgrimage, it is a going with Jesus Christ. A going in that direction that he has pointed out to us and is pointing out to us.

...It is an ascent to the true height of being human. Man can choose an easy path and avoid all toil. He can also descend to what is lower. He can sink into lies and dishonesty. Jesus goes ahead of us, and he goes up to what is above. He leads us to what is great, pure, he leads us to the healthy air of the heights: to life according to truth; to the courage that does not let itself be intimidated by the gossip of dominant opinions; to the patience that stands up for and supports the other. He leads us to availability to the suffering, to the abandoned; to the loyalty that stands with the other even when the situation makes it difficult.

He leads us to availability to bring help; to the goodness that does not let itself be disarmed not even by ingratitude. He leads us to love -- he leads us to God.

~Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for Palm Sunday

Dear Jesus, I want to go up to Jerusalem with You, but my selfishness and faintheartedness cause me to falter. Within Your wounds, hide me! There let me rejoice in Your mercy. There renew me in Your love. Amen.

Hosanna or Crucify?

Let us turn our attention to those two exclamations issuing from people’s lips. There is today’s exclamation, "Hosanna," and the one we will hear during Passion Week on Great Thursday and Great Friday. Those exclamations are called out in our lives as well. When do we say "Hosanna?" When our soul opens up to God, when we recognize our sinfulness, when we see our sin, and we rush to bring true repentance to God and to change our life, adjusting and regulating it according to Christ’s Commandments, in order to set it on the path of the virtues. Then, truly, "Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord" sounds in our souls. Blessed is Christ, coming into my heart, into my soul, into my life. I am just as ready, O Lord, to come out to meet You, ready to spread out before You the garments of my virtues and the God-pleasing works I have done. When we act in that way, we are saying "Hosanna."

But let’s ask ourselves (and try to give an honest, unhypocritical answer) the question: Does that exclamation often sound in my life? Does not "Crucify Him, Crucify Him" sound out more often in my soul? That is precisely what my soul cries out to God when I continue to stagnate in my sins; when I continue to be indifferent to the state of my soul, and do not care whether it is healthy or sick, or perhaps, already dead; when what is happening around me doesn’t matter to me, when I am concerned only with my own visible success; when I don’t see the person who is right beside me; when I am blind to his needs and I remain callous, selfish, not wanting to even think that someone might be in need of my human warmth, my kind words, my sympathetic glance. In short, when I forget my Christian calling, I join the crowd of those Jews who in anger and hatred cried out to Pilate "Crucify Him, crucify Him."

Such are the vitally important questions the Feast of the Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem poses to us; it calls us to reflect on them on the eve of Passion Week and of our Lord’s passion, to comprehend His love, His enormous sacrifice. Just consider His limitless love for mankind! If was because of that love that He, our Lord and Creator, became like us, His creation. Not only does he become Man, but takes up His Cross and ascends Golgotha, there to be crucified together with our sins, to redeem the sins of each -- those who live, have lived, or are to live on earth. Through that crucifixion, through that sacrifice, we are liberated from slavery to sin and are graced with the possibility of being like unto God. The Lord loves us that much!

… As we enter into the days of Passion Week, into the Passion of our Lord, let us constantly be mindful of it, both at home and at work. To the extent possible, may the sufferings of Christ be our own as well. Let us remember that the Lord entered Jerusalem with tears in his eyes. He wept for the city and for the people who did not recognize His coming. May we not be like those irrational people! How wonderful it would be to see on the Lord’s face not tears, but a look of joy. Joy over the fact that we, His children, are striving towards him; of course children who are sometimes irrational, who commit sins and make mistakes, but his children, who love their Lord and cannot imagine life without Him. May Christ’s eyes be brimming not with tears but joy. That depends upon us alone. Let us strive and apply all of our efforts. "Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!"

~from a homily by Father Victor Potapov, Rector, Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Washington, DC

Dear Lord, at least this week, the holiest week of the year, may I sing "Hosanna!" more than I shout "Crucify!" I love You, my Jesus. Please help me love you more and more. Amen.

Life-through-death

In his homily on Palm Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI reflected upon "the fundamental law of human existence" that our Lord Jesus formulated when he said: "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit." (Jn. 12:24)

He who wants to have his life for himself, live only for himself, squeeze out everything for himself and exploit all the possibilities -- he is the one who loses his life. It becomes boring and empty. Only in abandoning ourselves, only in the disinterested gift of the "I" in favor of the "Thou," only in the "Yes" to the greater life, precisely the life of God, our life too becomes full and more spacious. Thus, this fundamental principle that the Lord establishes is, in the final analysis, simply identical with the principle of love. Love, in fact, means leaving yourself behind, giving yourself, not wanting to hold on to yourself, but becoming free from yourself: not getting preoccupied with yourself -- what will become of me -- but looking ahead, toward the other -- toward God and the people whom he sends to me. It is this principle of love that defines man's journey, it is once again identical with the mystery of the cross, with the mystery of death and resurrection that we encounter in Christ.

The Holy Father pointed out that our Yes "to the greater life" is an ongoing one that we must repeat over and over again through daily sacrifice and renunciation.

Dear friends, perhaps it is relatively easy to accept this grand fundamental vision of life. In concrete reality, however, it is not just a simple matter of recognizing a principle, but of living its truth, the truth of the cross and the resurrection. And for this, once again, just one big decision is not enough. It is surely important at some point to dare to make a fundamental decision, to dare the great "Yes" that the Lord asks of us at a certain moment in our life. But the great "Yes" of the decisive moment in our life -- the "Yes" to the truth that the Lord places before us -- must then be daily re-conquered in the everyday situations in which, again and again, we must abandon our "I," make ourselves available, when, at bottom, we just want to hang on to that "I." Sacrifice, renunciation, also belongs to an upright life. He who permits himself a life without this ever renewed gift of self, deceives people. There is no successful life without sacrifice. If I cast a retrospective glance on my own life, I must say that precisely those moments in which I said "Yes" to renunciation were the great and important moments of my life.

The mystery of life-through-death is an awful one. It is clearly formidable, difficult to undertake and arousing fear, dread or alarm. Who of us is ever completely ready and willing to give up our precious, little "I"? Not I! Who and what will "I" be without that "I" to which I so desperately cling? And the emptiness – my God, the emptiness! How I dread the emptiness! What will be left if I totally surrender my "I" to You? Nothing! Can I really trust You to fill me with Yourself? Are You there even now in that emptiness that I so foolishly strive to fill up with mere trifles and so fervently avoid at all costs, just waiting for me to let go of my "I" so that I may know and experience my utter nothingness and thus be free to be possessed by You alone?

This is indeed an awful mystery, filled with awe and exceedingly great. The life-through-death that our Beloved Lord speaks of is no ordinary life – it is the abundant life that He Himself came to give us (Jn 10:10), "the prize of God's upward calling" (Phil 3:14). It is the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, for which I can gladly count everything as loss because of its supreme worth (Phil 3:8). It is the life of infinite love, the love of the Father for the Son – "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son!" (Jn. 3:16) -- and the love of the Son for the Father, love that emptied itself and was obedient unto death and yet could never die but gushes forth unceasingly in the splendor of the Resurrection.

"Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all!"
by Isaac Watts, published 1707

His Will is Truth and Love

In his homily for Palm Sunday this past weekend, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Olives as it appears in the gospel of St. John.

There is first of all the statement, "My soul is troubled" (12:27). Here Jesus' fear appears, which is amply illustrated by the other evangelists -- his fear in the face of the power of death, in the face of the entire abyss of evil that he sees and into which he must descend. The Lord suffers our anxieties together with us, he accompanies us in the last anxiety until we come to the light. Then there follow, in John, Jesus' two questions. The first is only expressed conditionally: "What will I say, 'Father, save me from this hour?'" (12:27). As a human being, Jesus also felt driven to ask that he be spared the terror of the passion. We too can pray in this way. We too can lament before the Lord like Job, present all our questions that arise in us in the face of the injustice in the world and the problems affect us personally. Before God we must not take refuge in pious phrases, in a world of make-believe. Praying also means struggling with God, and like Jacob we can say to him: "I will not let you go until you have given me a blessing!" (Genesis 32:37). But then there is Jesus' second request: "Glorify your name!" (John 12:28). The Synoptic Gospels put this request in this way: "Not my will but your will be done!" (Luke 22:42). In the end, God's glory, his lordship, his will is always more important and more true than my thoughts and my will. And this is what is essential in our prayer and in our life: understanding this right order of reality, accepting it interiorly; trusting in God and believing that he is doing the right thing; understanding that his will is the truth and is love; understanding that my life will be a good life if I can learn how to conform to this order. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the guarantee that we can truly entrust ourselves to God. It is in this way that his kingdom is realized.

"His will is the truth and is love," the Holy Father states. When I think otherwise, it's usually because I'm caught up in my own small world where my ego runs amok, causing me to be focused on myself, obsessed with my agenda, and convinced that I know what's best for others and myself. But when I look beyond myself and lift up my eyes to the holy hill of Calvary, where Truth and Love were crucified, then I find my Beloved Jesus, who enables me to pray with him, in glad and confident surrender: "Father, glorify your name!" (Jn. 12:28)

Palm Sunday

You were clad with purple,
you put on a scarlet cloak
as a sign of shame, in the thoughts
of Pontius Pilate's soldiers.

Take me from the haircloth of sin,
the red-purple, the color of blood,
and clothe me with the joyous garment
you once put on the first humans.


With the tearing of the veil
on account of Adam's debts
tear my ingrained meanness,
destroy the bond of my life's sins.

I believe with all my soul
and adore you, O only Son,
forgive me the faults I committed;
may my past sins not be remembered!


To the thief on your right
you opened the door of the Garden of Eden;
remember me also when you come back
with the royal power of your Father.

May I too hear what causes us to exult,
the answer pronounced by you:
"Today you will be with me in Paradise,
in your primordial homeland."

Nerses Snorhali, 12th-century monk and pastor