4/10 - Palm Sunday 2022

     From fervor to crowd influence
Today’s liturgy combines two contrasting moments, one of glory, the other of suffering - the welcome of Jesus into Jerusalem and the drama of His trial which ends in His crucifxion and death. Let us rejoice and sing as Jesus comes into our life today. Let us also weep and mourn as His death confronts us with our sin. The African-American song asks the question, "Were you there when they crucifed my Lord? Were you there when they nailed Him to a tree?" The answer is yes, a defnite yes. Yes, we were there in the crowd on both days, shouting, “Hosanna!” and later “Crucify Him!” We live out this fckleness of the crowd in our vacillating fervor between fervent prayer and missing our practices of piety due to laziness. Normally, the celebration of Mass on Palm Sunday takes the usual form, but with two key exceptions or marks. At the beginning of Mass, we have the commemoration of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem with the blessing of palms and then later, we have a lengthy reading of the Gospel connected with Jesus’ passion. Both these tell us of what is special about this day. Our main attention is drawn to Jesus’ entrance into the holy city of Jerusalem.
     Today, we receive palm branches at the Divine Liturgy.  We imitate the crowds as we wave the palm branches as we sing “hosanna to the Son of David.” Why do we do this and why bother with palms? The answer goes back to how we pray. We pray with our bodies and senses (waving palm branches and singing in this case!) and we use physical, tangible things such as palm branches, to put us in mind of spiritual realities. The prayers used to bless the palms make this clear: “sanctify these branches with your blessing, that we, who follow Christ the King in exultation, may reach the eternal Jerusalem through Him”; or, “…that we, who today hold high these branches to hail Christ in His triumph, may bear fruit for you by good works accomplished in Him.”
      Let us take them to our homes and put them in a place where we can always see them. Let the palms remind us that Christ is the King of our families, that Christ is the King of our hearts, and that Christ is the only true answer to our quest for happiness and meaning in our lives. And if we do proclaim Christ as our King, let us try to make time for Him in our daily life; let us be reminded that He is the One with Whom we will be spending eternity.  Let us be reminded further that our careers, our education, our fnances, our homes, all of the basic material needs in our lives are only temporary.  Let us prioritize and place Christ the King as the primary concern in our lives.  It is only when we have done this that we will find true peace and happiness in our confused and complex world.
     We can also be mindful of Jesus’ words: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fre and they are burned” (John 15: 4-7). The palms that we would have used and received at the Mass today are green and supple. People make them into crosses or even more elaborate designs. However, with time, the palms dry out and become brittle, because they no longer have the sap from the palm tree running through them. So too with us. If we become detached from our Lord, we dry out and become brittle, even dead.
     Let us take a fresh look at this familiar event. It could change us forever because the Passion of Jesus shows us that we are sinners who have crucifed Jesus,  and we are able to turn to Jesus again and ask for his mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is through the Passion of Jesus we receive forgiveness, “through his wounds we are healed.”  (Isa 53:5). I wish you and your family God’s blessings on this Holy Week and the Feast of the Resurrection. Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O