Holy Week

04-10-2022Weekly ReflectionFr. Arul Doss

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus,

Good morning. First of all, I thank and appreciate all the Ladies of PCCW of our Immaculate Conception, St. Lawrence and St. Boniface for arranging different meals during this Lenten season.

Today we enter into Holy week with Palm or Passion Sunday. We celebrate today the royal entry of Christ into Jerusalem in order to accomplish his paschal mystery. By freely going to Jerusalem, Christ demonstrates his humility and willingness to save us.

Our first reading is taken from one of the ebed (suffering) Yahweh' songs. Christ is prefigured in this song as the suffering servant. Christ humbly endured his suffering without any resistance. Also, in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we see humility at its apogee. This is the kenosis or self-emptying of Christ: “Though he was in the form of man, He did not regard equality with God.”

The Passion of Christ is not a past event only. It is all around us, every day, sickness and sadness; poverty and pettiness; dysfunction and divorce; and when the bills are piling up and the money’s running short—all those times when, like Jesus on the cross, we feel like crying out in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” The horrors and pain of the cross might cause us to forget that the greatest power of the Lord’s Passion is not in suffering and pain but rather in love.

It is the love of God—beheld in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus—that we celebrate today and will celebrate in a very special way in the coming week. It was love that enabled Jesus, in the words of St. Paul in our second reading, to disregard grasping for equality with God and instead to empty himself and take “the form of a slave.” It was in love that he humbled himself and became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” On this Palm Sunday—Passion Sunday—can we accept that love, and are we willing to live out its consequences? Today we are called again to walk with Jesus as disciples and servants with:

  • Well-trained tongues—Through prayer, reflection, and a growing knowledge of the Bible and our Catholic tradition, to be able to “speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.”
  • Strong backs—Willing to help our sisters and brothers, especially those who are poor, marginalized and vulnerable, to carry their burdens.
  • Flinty faces—Able to deal with the misunderstanding, opposition, and even the persecution that sometimes comes from fidelity to the Gospel.
  • Emptied selves—Ready to grow in holiness and usefulness to God by letting go of our sins—especially the deadly sins of pride, anger, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, and laziness.

May we follow the example of the Suffering Servant who shows us the way of disarming hatred with love, evil with goodness, violence with benevolence, indifference with compassion. Have a Happy Sunday!

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