With today being Palm Sunday we enter Holy Week – the beginning of the great drama of our redemption. Our Lord enters Jerusalem to the cries of “Hosanna, Son of David”, and yet He knew that in a few days time, those same voices would be crying out, “Crucify Him.” So today, the Church in her wisdom, places before us both the glory and the sorrow, because the two cannot be separated. It is no coincidence that your palms today are already in the shape of a cross.

Our Lord came into this world for one supreme purpose: to offer Himself in sacrifice. Although He preached and worked countless miracles, His mission was to redeem. The Cross was there even at Bethlehem. He was laid in a manger – a place of feeding – prefiguring how He would give Himself as the Bread of Life. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, foreshadowing His burial cloth. The wood of the manger anticipated the wood of the Cross.

The Letter to the Hebrews (chapters 9 and 10) speaks of this mystery with great clarity. Christ is both the Priest (the one who offers sacrifice) and the Victim (the one being sacrificed). Christ doesn’t offer the blood of animals. He offers His own Precious Blood. And so He accomplished what the sacrifices of the Old Law could only prefigure. But why was the sacrifice of the Son of God necessary? It was necessary because we, being finite human beings, could not pay the infinite debt of our sins to the infinite God.  It required a reparation of infinite value. No mere creature could offer such satisfaction. Only God could do it, which is why He became man in JESUS Christ. Therefore, every act and every drop of His Precious Blood, and every agony He underwent for our sake was of an infinite value, and thus He paid the price of all our sins, past, present and future, until the end of time. As St Athanasius (297- 373) put it: “He surrendered His Body to death in place of all, and offered it to the Father.” Therefore, the debt has been paid, man is reconciled to God, and the gates of Heaven are opened to us. All we have to do is embrace the salvation offered us.

So as we enter the holiest days of the Church’s year, don’t let them pass by like any other day. Make the effort to be present at the ceremonies. Come to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening, and then keep watch with Him in His agony at the Altar of Repose. Stand at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday with Our Lady, St John and St Mary Magdalene, and then venerate the instrument of your salvation. And then return in the darkness of Holy Saturday night to witness the triumph of His Resurrection. These are no mere commemorations. In the Sacred Liturgy, the mysteries of our redemption are made present to us sacramentally. It is as if we are actually present at those events, and the graces won by Our Lord JESUS Christ on Calvary are opened up and applied to us here and now. We cannot remain indifferent. Don’t be among those who shouted “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday, but who had disappeared by Good Friday. Stay with Him, walk with Him, and pray with Him.

Fr Paul Gillham, IC