Today is Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. It is the beginning of Holy Week.
Today we begin the holiest week of the Christian year. We make our final preparations to celebrate Easter and the joy of the Resurrection. During this week we’ll hear the Passion story, twice if we attend Good Friday service as well as today’s Palm Sunday Mass. We’ll also celebrate the founding of the priesthood and Eucharist during Thursday evening’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper, one of my favorite Masses of the year.
Today we hear some of the great readings from our tradition. We hear two Gospel readings if we attend the procession Mass, typically 10:30 at Blessed Sacrament. We hear from Isaiah about his faith and resoluteness and from Paul’s letter to the Philippians where we hear about the Name of Jesus. We also hear this unusual psalm, 22, where Jesus says, My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me“?
We always wonder, does Jesus feel abandoned in that moment? After all, He was both human and divine. Wouldn’t His divinity have answered that question for Him or in His agony did the human side take over, at least at that moment? The other thing we’re told by some is that saying these words, that come from the beginning of the psalm, Jesus is calling our attention to the entire psalm, which ends as praise for the Father.
The thing I’ve been thinking of though is all the people who feel abandonment, particularly in our modern society. Babies who are discarded because it’s inconvenient to be pregnant. Children, women, men, the elderly, migrants, the poor, the mentally ill, and more. To feel abandoned must be a terrible thing. We believe our God never abandons us but sometimes people still feel abandoned. That’s one reason why it’s so important for us Christians to engage with others, especially those who have been abandoned or set aside in some way, to make the love of God present for them and to offer them hope.
So, as we walk through Holy Week let us not forget those for whom abandonment is real and dedicate ourselves to make Christ and His hope present for them and for each other.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a holy week.
Peace, Bob
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