PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION

13 APRIL 2025

 

            In 1931, Gertrud von Le Fort wrote a novel, entitled The Song at the Scaffold.  It was about the true story of a Carmelite community of nuns in France, who were executed in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.  During a moving scene, the nuns are observing the “blasphemous mockeries of Eucharistic processions.”  One of the sisters refers to the Eucharist as “the defenseless God.”  Her remarks describe how dependent God in the Eucharist is on human respect and faith.  God in the Eucharist is wholly vulnerable to human choice and action, whether that action is faith-filled and reverent or blasphemous and denigrating.

            Ours is a God who does not shield himself from buffets and spitting.  To use the words of Saint Paul, Jesus does not grasp at divinity as an escape from (or punishment for) human weakness. This Passion according to Saint Luke sets the stage for our reflection on the final chapter in the continuing story of God’s choice to be vulnerable to human sin.

            Lent ends this Thursday evening when we enter into the Sacred Paschal Triduum and celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 6:00.  We are invited to stay with the Lord through the Passover Meal and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We will witness the denial in the courtyard of the high priest, along with the solitude of the night in custody and the mockery of the council of elders.  On Good Friday at the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion at 1:00, we will visit the shuffle between Pilate and Herod, along with the brutality of scourging and the carrying of the cross.  On Calvary, we will hear the reproach of friend and foe alike, the last breath, and the placement of the dead body into his mother’s arms.

            We will begin with the darkness of that death at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening at 9:00.  But throughout that incredibly beautiful Liturgy, we will renew our faith that the horrors of this reality will be replaced by Easter joy and redemption.  It is critical that we gather together for these liturgies, identifying with our defenseless God who has destroyed the power of death by entering into it himself.

 

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

6 APRIL 2025

 

          The prophet Isaiah gives hope to his people in captivity in Babylon.  He reminds them of God’s saving acts in the past.  God had led their ancestors in their journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land through the Red Sea in.  The mighty army of Pharaoh’s horsemen was drowned in their pursuit.  However, he tells his people not to remember the events of the past.  God will do something new.  God is present to his people in captivity, and God will lead them in a new journey through another desert to their homeland.  God will give them water, just as God had done for their ancestors. 

            Saint Paul is also on a journey when he writes to the Philippians.  Writing from his prison cell, he has lost everything.  He has lost his ministry to the Gentiles and the freedom of traveling wherever the Lord led him.  He had also lost the sinful parts of his life, especially his original hatred for the disciples of Jesus Christ and for his active persecution of the Church.  He accepts the loss of all those things, because he has found gain in Jesus Christ.  Because of that gain, he can let go of what is behind him and strains forward to what lies ahead.  He can continue his pursuit toward the goal of achieving the prize of God’s upward calling in Jesus Christ.  He is confident in his journey to share in the fullness of the resurrection.

            As we continue our journey through the desert of Lent, the story of the woman caught in adultery provides some direction.  The scribes and Pharisees bring a woman caught in the act of adultery.  As Pope John Paul II asked, where is the man?  Instead of bringing both people, they bring the more vulnerable of the two.  They could care less about this woman.  They use her to set a trap for Jesus.  They ask him if they should follow the law of Moses and have the woman stoned.  If Jesus agrees, they will question his teaching about mercy.  If he responds that the woman should be shown mercy, they will accuse him of ignoring the law of Moses.  Instead of falling into their trap, he bends down and writes on the ground with his finger.  We have no idea what he is writing.  Then he dares the one among them without sin to be the first to throw a stone at her.  After they all go away one by one, he addresses the woman.

            Instead of using her as an object, as the scribes and Pharisees has done, he speaks to her with love.  Just as no one had been able to condemn her, he does not condemn her either.  He does not minimize her sin of adultery.  Instead, he tells her to leave that sin in the past and not sin again.  He invites her to cast off the misery of her past sins to live without sin with him.  The loss of her misery can be replaced by his mercy.

            We have no idea what that woman chose to do.  Did she go back to her lover, or did she agree to allow Jesus Christ to journey with her?  Because this is the living Word of God, the Lord invites us to deepen our trust in his presence and to journey with him.  In our journey, we can recall the many ways the Lord has been with us in the past and give thanks.  We might be tempted to recall the ways we have refused to journey with Jesus Christ and have turned against him.  Like the ancient Israelites, like Saint Paul, and like the woman caught in adultery, we can count all of those times as loss.  Our common gain is our relationship with Jesus Christ.  It is that gain which is being revealed in our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

            In these last two weeks of our journey through the desert of Lent, we can face a wilderness of uncertainty, because God is before us preparing the way.  He is doing a “new thing," which we can embrace with hope as we walk with him through his passion, death, and ultimately to his resurrection.