Homily for Palm Sunday

Homily delivered by Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, Parish Priest

Scripture readings: Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

Thank God for new life. Thank God for spring. Thank God for all the exuberance of Palm Sunday. Hosanna… But the reality of evil is never far away. The evil of war, the inhumanity, the injustice, the perilous situation we find ourselves in on our fragile planet we’re called to steward. Death on a cross… we turn on our saviour and crucify him.

This Easter is not quite the hope at the end of the dark tunnel which the pandemic has been for so many. Hosanna is not easy to say for so many. Religious faith is a casualty of this pandemic too. Many of us this weekend will be on the edge of the crowd, not quite knowing how to react to the entry of the Messiah, not quite knowing what is good and bad any more. Mass trauma brings this response. And yet there is new hope too and maybe you are joining us for the first time. If you’re participating through the livestream it’s a shame you couldn’t be here in person so able to see and join in the Procession, but we’re going to correct that when our new cameras and new video and audio system comes in. Please know though you are part of the Farm Street family.

Holy Week, I pray, brings us together more and more as the Church, by which I mean in an extended sense of all who come through our doors, virtual and real.

We come together as a diverse crowd just as was the case on the first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem. To mark, to mourn, to celebrate these most sacred and human of days together as the human family, the family of God, we humans all, sinners all, yet people of hope in our beautiful yet hostile world.