PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION

APRIL 4/5, 2009

            I share with you this reflection I recently read as we enter into this year’s celebration of Holy Week.

            “One picture is worth a thousand words.  But much depends upon what is in that picture.  Without the eyes of faith, all that one sees in a crucifix is the limp body of a man hanged, presumably for some terrible crime.  There is no mistaking that the death was agonizing.  There is no avoiding the pain—quite a lot of it.  For someone without faith, this is failure and shame.

            Yet Christians hold the cross in honor.  The crucifix has a different message.  …For those with faith it is a sign of God’s love—a God who loved us so much that he sent his only Son to die for us.  But it also conveys God’s power.  He raised up that only Son from death and opens for us a way beyond mortality to eternal life with God.  By uniting ourselves to the Innocent One, our own innocence can be restored.

            Unless one sees God’s power there, the cross will appear as foolishness.  If Christ did not truly rise, our faith is empty, our hope of immortality vain.  Where there is no expectation of life beyond the grave, then only earthly life seems worth anything.  Bodily death will seem the gravest threat, unmatched by any spiritual death of soul that might come from unrepented crime or sin. …Everything in such a world is topsey-turvey, and the message of the cross seems foolish to those who are perishing.  But in fact, the Innocent One has died for the sake of us who are guilty, and the power of God prevails.”

(Father Joseph Koterski, S.J., Praying With Saint Paul, Magnificat, March 25.)

                                                                                    Father Jim Secora

                                                                                      5 April, 2009