Paradox

Homily for Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
Sunday, 24 March 2013

        Acclamations and abandonment. Triumph and trial. Elation and execution. Blessings and betrayals. “Hosanna!” and “Hail, King of the Jews!” The palms and the Passion. Glory and gall. The crowds and the Cross.

        My friends, we gather on this Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion to celebrate the paradoxes of our faith. We memorialize once again the fact that we praise the Lord for all He has done for us, yet we also share in His Passion and Death. Yet this Sunday is different.

        This day, this celebration helps us enter in to the most holy time of the Church’s calendar. What we remember each time through Word and Sacrament is brought now to a profound memory, an active memory in the collective life of the Church.

        The Paschal Mystery of Christ, the Mystery of the Cross helps us to recall that setting in which the mercy of God is most profound. It is in that setting which we mystically join in through our participation in the Eucharist. It is through these mysteries – these mysteries of paradoxes – that we understand how acclamations and abandonments, triumphs and trials, elations and executions, blessings and betrayals are truly complementary to one another.

        The Cross Itself is a paradox. Yet it is also that which must remain central to our life of faith. We recall the words of Pope Francis:

“When we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, and when we profess without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord.”

        Even in the midst of our own crosses, we acknowledge the mercy of our God. Through the passions and sufferings of our own lives, the Lord still calls us to follow Him, just as He called Saint Dismas, the Good Thief, from His Cross. This points back to the words of our Holy Father. When we decide to do anything apart from the Cross, we choose not to follow Jesus. When we decide that we know better than Christ or His Church, we throw away the cross of suffering and discipleship and pick up the cross that’s stylish and fashionable, a cross that’s socially acceptable and “pretty”.

        Brothers and sisters, the cross we carry is ugly and hideous because of our suffering and pain. Yet, just like the Cross of Christ, it is made beautiful through our suffering and pain. That is the paradox of life: Our suffering and pain is to transform us into the beautiful creation God has made us to be. The Cross shows us how this is so. The Cross is the prime example of how to follow Christ even in the midst of our suffering and pain, just like Saint Dismas.

        In a special way today, we commemorate the paradox of our salvation with the words of Saint Andrew, the first disciple, upon seeing the wood of his own cross upon which he was to die:

O good Cross,
made beautiful by the Body of the Lord:
long have I desired you,
ardently have I loved you,
unceasingly have I sought you out;
and now you are ready for my eager soul.
Receive me from among men
and restore me to my Master,
so that He -
who, by means of you,
in dying redeemed me -
may receive me.
Amen.

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Enjoy the journey . . .