Homily from the Parish Priest for Palm Sunday
Readings for Year B: Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47
Hosanna… the Messiah has arrived to save us, to bring us out of our tunnel of despair and slavery, to embrace a brave new world which dawns on us, thanks be to our God who loves his people, whose name is mercy… Hosanna in the Highest… but fear, doubt, betrayal… condemnation… death on a cross… we turn on our saviour and crucify him.
Right now it may very well seem we are still there at the cross and the tomb. This Easter is not quite the hope at the end of the dark tunnel which the pandemic has been for so many. Anxiety, frustration, exasperation at the relentless drudgery of our daily lives. And many are still sick. And many have died, often alone. The reality of death will affect us as a community, even as a community of faith, for much time to come. Hosanna is not easy to say for so many. Religious faith will be a casualty of this last year 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.
But the Passion is not the end of the journey. Jesus will suffer again for us, will suffer with us, will accompany us as we watch from the crowd off the Via Dolorosa behind our computer screens and just peering into the drama from our standpoint of shock, fed up, longing for something better, for a new era when the broken world will be made whole again and humanity flourish again emerging from the dying throes of an old world view which has ended in polarisation, hostility, a broken body, even many will say, especially some will say, within the Body of Christ which is our Church. The Passion always propels us on to Easter, to wholeness, to harmony, to a humanity truly saved from our own “crucify him” which is never too far from our true self. But we are always journeying towards Easter. Always with the hope of new life. We are an Easter People. Our Christian faith has this as its basis.
So what does it mean for us today to enter this Holy Week, a Holy Week we will never forget? A second Holy Week in succession when the horror of COVID towers over us and locks us in as a people as yet unredeemed? As we hear the Passion again. As we prepare to follow Our Lord in his journey to his death, and to the tomb, so we can rise again. And in so doing we learn to hope yet again and we learn what Christian service is all about, what our Christian calling is all about.
And so once again now watch with him, worship him, and hear his call to join ourselves with he who is total self-sacrificial love for others, so we might bring something of our even so battered faith in this mystery to others around us, and especially the most vulnerable who are closest to him in his passion and death.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ