Palm Sunday - Part 1
Palm Sunday - Part 2
Lk 23:1-29
Is 50:4-7
Phil 2:6-11
Lk 22:14 – 23:56
Focus: Today is the beginning of Holy Week which is the peak point of the liturgical year.
Function: We are invited to participate in it fully, actively and consciously.
It was a shock when Fr. Dick Hauser, whom many of us knew, was diagnosed with cancer and died only a few weeks after that. A week ago, on April 3, was the fourth anniversary of his passing into eternity.
Fr. Dick, Jesuit and Professor at Creighton University, also presented many workshops at St. Benedict Center and was my spiritual director. Two weeks after his diagnosis of terminal cancer I was able to visit him. Fr. Dick shared that he had been angry toward the doctors. Wouldn’t they have been able to detect the cancer earlier?
However, this lung cancer was aggressive and fast-growing. A specialized treatment might have prolonged his life some, but could also have had devastating side-effects. Fr. Dick decided against it. One night he didn’t get any sleep, wresting with these issues, in prayer. But then he could accept reality and found inner peace.
To me it was utterly amazing how this very active man now dealt with this sudden turn in his life. In response to my inquiries, he did share some of his struggles. However, time and again he managed to direct our conversation away from him and toward me. He asked me about my life and my prayer; I shared a few things. He listened and commented. In the end, he asked for my blessing and I gave it to him. I asked him for his and he blessed me. I will never forget this visit with a person who, even in the sight of impending death, was so completely oriented away from himself and toward others.
This encounter came to my mind as I prayed with the Passion of our Lord according to Luke. The evangelist Luke highlights more than the other three how Jesus, in his suffering, constantly cares for the well-being of others. During the last supper, he says to Peter, “I have prayed that your… faith may not fail… once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers and sisters.” – On the Mount of Olives, Jesus heals the ear of a servant that one of his disciples had cut off. – On the way of the cross, Jesus talks to the weeping women, comforts them, and calls them to conversion. – Hanging on the cross in agonizing pain, he prays for his executioners: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” To the repentant criminal he says: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” His merciful love offers a person an opportunity for repentance even in the hour of his death.
Luke’s gospel as a whole is also the one in which we find Jesus in prayer most often. Luke describes Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives in greatest detail, too. Jesus was in such agony and prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. Only Luke relates this. In his prayer, as always, he addresses God as Father, Abba in Aramaic, Daddy. He prays with great trust. And we hear (only in Luke) that an angel appeared to him from heaven to strengthen him. It is prayer that prepares Jesus for his Passion and that supports him in it. In his prayer for his torturers, he asks, Abba, this heavenly Father, to forgive them. And in prayer he surrenders himself the Abba: "“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Today is the beginning of Holy Week which is the peak point of the liturgical year. We are invited to participate in it fully, actively and consciously. We journey with Jesus from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem through his trial, his passion and his death on the cross, to his glorious resurrection.
During these days, we are invited to be with Jesus on this journey. Jesus sets no limits to his love. It is good during these days to empathize with Jesus, To be with him, to stick it out with him, to stay with him, to see and to listen. If we do so then he will also be and increasingly become our teacher of love, a love which we are meant not to abandon even if things become difficult in our own lives.
Secondly, Holy Week is a time to bring our suffering in prayer trustingly before our heavenly Father, and before Christ our Lord, our own issues and struggles, those of our families and of our Church, of people in our country and around the world. None of these things are foreign to Christ. Let us pray especially for the people in Ukraine, who are suffering from a brutal war and for the Ukrainians who have fled their country that they may receive effective help and not lose hope.
The Servant of God in today’s first reading spoke to the weary words that encouraged them and he showed them kindness. We are invited especially also during these days to be aware of those around us (and those for away from us) who are in need. There are so many ways in which we can do good to others and so imitate Jesus’ compassion and other-centeredness.
We know that he who emptied himself and died on the cross is Lord to the glory of God the Father! AMEN.
~Fr. Thomas Leitner, OSB