Homily Notes Palm Sunday 2018
Palm Sunday, “We Participate in the Prayer”
The Holy Week liturgies can be powerful experiences. We could compare them to a theatrical production. In speaking of the liturgy in that way, we are not being disrespectful. The ancient Greeks had many theaters in their cities. Often, they were connected to different religious temples, in other words, it was all part of the worship experience. Sometimes plays were even a way of initiating a person into a religious faith.
What we experience over the next week is a type of theater. What makes it so moving? What makes it touching is that it engages the worshipper in the liturgical action more than at any time.
We’ve all been to plays. When we go, we expect to be entertained. We sit in the audience to observe the actors in their costumes reciting their lines. Maybe we are overwhelmed by a stirring performance. Most often, we are passive participants, watching, taking it all in.
But there are plays that are different. One such play is called Late Night Catechism. The audience comes into a theater set up like a classroom. There is one actor. He or she is dressed up like a religious sister in full habit. The audience is transported back in time to when they were in school. The sister begins teaching. She asks questions of people who are in the room. The spectators become uncomfortable. In this play it is hard to be passive because the nun is in people’s faces, asking questions, telling people to stop chewing gum, wrapping people on the knuckles. Sister is mercurial. At one moment she praises the students (audience) at other times she scolds and threatens.
The interesting thing is no one relaxes. No one can be passive because if you lose concentration the teacher will hit you in the head with an eraser. We are transported back in time to our grade school days experiencing a host of emotions like insecurity, joy, fear, anger, nostalgia. A common memory is pricked.
The liturgy of Holy Week is meant to engage us. On Palm Sunday we process with the crowds who met Jesus in Jerusalem. We are challenged to step outside the church, to take to the streets, to proclaim our faith in Christ Jesus. Somehow there is feeling of connection as well as embarrassment as we walk down the street with our parish community. We carry our palms in our hands singing our hosannas. We take our palm home with us. We place it behind our crucifix to remind us of passion Sunday throughout the years. The assembly helps with the gospel reading. The congregation says, “Crucify him.” One moment we praise Jesus, the next we call out for this death. How this reflects the spiritual ups and downs of our lives!
On Holy Thursday members of the congregation have their feet washed. We come forward to receive the Eucharist as those first disciples did at the Last Supper. At the end of Mass there is a procession that winds around the church to the place of repose. After Mass is over, we can pray with Jesus at the tabernacle. “Can you remain awake with me,” Jesus asks each one of us?
On good Friday we again read the passion account, the Passion of John. We take part in another ritual that we only see once a year. Each person present, comes forward to reverence the cross. We can bow before it. We can kiss the cross. We can touch it. By our actions, we show that we understand the great sacrifice of Jesus who gives us an example of selfless love. We are confronted with the reality of suffering, we cannot turn away. We say by our nonverbal action that we are willing to pick up our cross, no matter what it is, and follow Jesus.
On Holy Saturday we gather in an unfamiliar way, we’re outside, at the entrance of the church. It will be cold, but we stand by a fire we bless. The church will be dark calling to mind the darkness of the tomb of Jesus. Everyone carries a lit candle into church. The many candles represent our common faith which dispels the darkness of sin and death. After six weeks of Lenten penance we renew our baptismal promises. We stand before the world to say we believe.
All this calls for full active participation. In the movements, the tastes, the sounds, the smells, we are renewed. We move from sorrow, to thankfulness, to sadness, to pensiveness, to joy. The church invites everyone this Holy Week, to come and experience, in a tangible way what the early Christian community did two millennia ago. We are invited to be transformed by the Easter Triduum. Be prepared not just to watch, but to walk with Jesus through the Paschal Mystery.