Sunday 20 March 2016

18 Mar

PALM SUNDAY

The kaleidoscope of life, with its ups and downs, its moments of love, elation and joy countered by rejection, failure and disappointment, of friends and foes, of affirmation and then back-stabbing, are all present in today’s Palm Sunday liturgy or, more accurately, in today’s “Account of Jesus Fulfilling God’s Plan of Salvation” which culminated in his Passion and Death. The only Hosannas that really count are those that come after Jesus’ death.  The green palm leaves and brightly coloured cloaks will soon become the wood of the cross and the funeral shroud.  And the leitmotif?  Obedience!  Constant, challenging, obedience! Obedience to the will of God: to love, to love, to love!  To love in good times as in bad.  Unconditional loving.  Are you up to that?

Jesus said, ‘If anyone wishes to be my disciple, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.’  (Matt. 16:24)  Let us be genuine, authentic disciples of Jesus, taking up our crosses and following him, loving … But loving to a rare and exquisite degree * … loving unconditionally.

(* c.f. A. Rosmini, Common Rules, Chp 3, On the Love of God, para. 9: ‘The soul’s perfection consists in the love of God raised to a rare and exquisite degree’)

Fr Philip Sainter

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