Passion (Palm) Sunday
St Mary's Cathedral
Is. 50:4-7 Phil. 2:6-11 Mt. 26:14-27:66
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
24 Mar 2002
Despite the fact that I have been participating in Holy Week celebrations for more than 50 years; or more accurately because I have been so participating for so long, I am always moved by the reading of the Passion.
As a child it seemed that we had to stand for an eternity during the long gospel reading, especially if we tried not to move our feet as an act of penance. Today, thank God, I can cope with small discomforts like that much better, and I am more and more caught up into the story.
We are now launched into the beginning of Holy Week. One of the things that we are called to do is walk with the Lord, walk with our Messianic King as he came into his own city to face this final challenge: the supreme test of obedience set for him by his Father.
If our preparation for the great feast of Easter has not been as perfect as we would like it, we still have some time to tidy things up: To go and receive the Sacrament of Penance, to be reconciled, to confess our sins personally to the priest as the Church recommends; for a bit of extra prayer and penance; also, if we have not made some special donation or donations at this time there still remains time for us to do so.
Certainly too we should take our palms home and place them behind our crucifixes. There should be a crucifix and a statue of Our Lady in every Catholic home; it is a useful pious practice to take the palms and to place them on the crucifix.
Just a brief word because it is a long ceremony, about the actual entry into Jerusalem. This procession was part of the redemptive process. It was a small blessing for Our Lord. Undoubtedly, it was an encouragement to him in his suffering to know that he had so many people who believed him and followed him. But it is only a prelude to the main event.
Our Lord would not be remembered in the slightest today simply for his entry into Jerusalem. It was a small time event in a provincial capital.
When I was younger I always thought of it in terms of events that I had experienced. For example, when I was a young man growing up in Ballarat and the Queen came to Australia for the first time, most of the citizens of Ballarat turned out to see her. Even youngsters remember how huge the crowds were at the Olympic games here. I used to think of the entry into Jerusalem in those terms. It almost certainly was not like that at all.
Jerusalem was not such an enormous city, with narrow, crowded, smelly streets. It was filled with people from many nations. The number of followers of Christ would have been perhaps like the numbers that the Salvation Army attract today. The people would have said, "What's going on?" "There's a bit of a fuss." "There's this mob, this small group, perhaps some hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more, many of them women, many from the countryside up north, welcoming this fellow down from Galilee." "Some sort of religious figure." This was the entry of the Son of God, the entry of our Messiah into Jerusalem just some days before his death.
We are used to the idea of a suffering Saviour, even though it is often difficult to follow through the consequences of this. Before Jesus the figure of the suffering servant from Isaiah (used in today's readings) was never applied to the Messiah, who was regularly seen as a political leader and liberator.
Let us enter then into the Spirit of his prayer of obedience. He said that his will was to do the will of the Father. In an ultimate sense, many, many times of course, it is very hard to recognise what that is but that must be our ambition too. During these coming days it is time for extra prayer, for some penance. We should not forget this is Holy Week. Dip into the scripture accounts of the Passion and read them slowly. Let us not leave Jesus to travel alone to his death on Good Friday and to his resurrection on Easter Sunday.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
