Since we are travellers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our roadway is our home (St Columban, 8th sermon).
Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road (Matthew 21:8; Gospel for Procession of Palms).
The Commemoration of
the Lord’s Entrance into Jerusalem
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to
Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples,saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a
donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me.If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them’,
and he will send them at once.”This took
place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet, saying,
“Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a
beast of burden.’”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.They brought the donkey and the
colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them.Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others
cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were
shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up,
saying, “Who is this?”And the crowds said, “This
is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
Readings at Mass
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
New American Bible version; the Philippines and USA
The
response for today's Responsorial Psalm is My God, my God, why have you
abandoned me? ('forsaken me' in the Jerusalem Bible Lectionary), the
last words of Jesus according to St Matthew, whose version of the Passion is
read today. The readings carry that theme, explicitly or implicitly. The
Prophet Isaiah says, I gave my back to those who beat me, my
cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from
buffets and spitting. The church applies these words to the sufferings of
Jesus. Yet there isn't total abandonment: The Lord GOD is my
help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like
flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
Psalm 21 (22) is fulfilled in the
Passion and Death of Jesus. St Paul in the reading from his Letter to the
Philippians speaks of the self-emptying of Jesus who: though he
was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something
to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being
born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled
himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:48).
An tAthair Pádraig Ó Crolaigh (Fr Patrick Crilly) of the Diocese of Derry, Ireland, reflects on this in his poem in Irish, An Crióst Tréigthe (The Abandoned Christ). I have added my own English translation.
An raibh sé ina aonar ar feadh a shaoil,
Was he alone throughout his life,
An Críost seo scartha ón Trionóid naofa?
This Christ separated from the holy Trinity?
Ar chrothnaigh sé an dá phearsa eile,
Did he notice the absence of the two other persons,
Nó an raibh sé in aineolas orthu?
Or was he unaware of them?
Agus i ndiaidh fhás na spioradáltachta ann,
And after the growth of spirituality in him,
I ndiaidh greim a fháil ar a cheangal le Dia,
After he grasped his connection with God,
Ar fágadh in aonar arís é ar an chrois
Was he left alone again on the cross
Gan a fhios aige cén fáth ar tréigeadh é?
Not knowing why he had been abandoned?
Nuair a fhuair sé bás ar an chrois,
When he died on the cross
Ar ócáid cheiliúrtha é filleadh abhaile?
Was going home an occasion of celebration?
Nó ar bhraith sé tréigean a dhaonnachta
Or did he feel the abandonment of his humanity
I gcumha a shaoil abhus mar dhuine?
In the loneliness of his life here as a human being?
Ag leanúint Chríost dúinn i mbeocht an tsaoil
In following Christ in the living of life
An mbuailfimid lena thréigean siúd?
Will we encounter his abandonment?
An féidir linn a bheith Críostaí
Can we be Christian
Gan casadh sa saol leis an Chríost tréigthe?
Without coming across the abandoned Christ in life?
Father Ó Crolaigh, I think, is teasing out some of the meaning of St Paul's words in today's Second Reading: Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Jesus wasn't acting or engaging in any kind of 'drama-drama', as they say in the Philippines. He truly suffered a sense of being forsaken, of being abandoned, in the very depths of his being. He did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. We see that in the Garden of Gethsemane when the three Apostles closest to him fell asleep during his hour of greatest need. His cry from the Cross, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? comes from the innermost recesses of his heart, from a sense of even his Father having abandoned him.
One of the forms of feeling abandoned that I have come across in recent years in persons I have met and in my reading is a sense of disillusionment with the Church. In some predominantly English-speaking countries Church leadership has lost much of its moral authority because of the way it has been seen to have dealt - or not to have dealt - with the awful reality of some priests having abused children and adolescents.
Many older persons in Western countries are bewildered by the reality of the younger generations having abandoned the Church to a large degree, not a few having abandoned Christianity itself. Maybe some have abandoned the faith because they see the Church, and by extension Christ himself, as having abandoned them. That should be a fearful thought for those who see themselves as followers of Jesus with the responsibility of making him known to the world.
In more and more families spouses are abandoned by their husband or wife, children by their parents. Though it's not as great a phenomenon now as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, friends have expressed to me their sense of having been abandoned by their priests who left. I know from friends who have left the priesthood that their decision to do so was often very painful and not taken lightly but I have rarely heard one who has made that decision express any awareness of the pain it has left in others.
Lourdes ‘Benedictus’
Music by N.
Darros
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (Matthew 21:9; Gospel for Procession of Palms; Proper of the Mass.)
Traditional Latin Mass
Passion Sunday
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 04-02-2023 if necessary).
And going a
little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will”(Matthew 26:39).
THE DONKEY by G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born;
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.
GospelJohn11:1-45 [11:3-7,17, 20-27,
33b-45] (English
Standard Version Anglicised: India)
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the
village of Mary and her sister Martha.It was Mary who anointed the
Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was
ill.So the sisters sent to him, saying,
“Lord, he whom you love is ill.”But when
Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead
to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be
glorified through it.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two
days longer in the place where he was.Then after this he said to the
disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now
seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?”Jesus answered, “Are
there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not
stumble, because he sees the light of this world.But if
anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.”The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will
recover.”Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but
they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep.Then
Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died,and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may
believe. But let us go to him.”So Thomas, called
the Twin, said
to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the
tomb four days.Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off,and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console
them concerning their brother.So when Martha
heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in
the house.Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will
give you.”Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”Martha
said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the
last day.”Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in
me, though he die, yet shall he live,and
everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe
this?”She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe
that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the
world.”
When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary,
saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”And when she heard it, she rose
quickly and went to him.Now Jesus had not yet
come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her,
saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was
going to the tomb to weep there.Now when Mary
came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to
him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also
weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”Jesus wept.So the Jews said,
“See how he loved him!”But some of them
said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have
kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It
was a cave, and a stone lay against it.Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the
sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an
odour, for he has been dead four days.”Jesus
said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you
believed you would see the glory of God?”So
they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of
the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”The man who had
died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his
face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind
him, and let him go.”
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary
and had seen what he did, believed in him.
Shorter form John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27,
33b-45(New American Bible)
The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus,
saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This
illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the
Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister
and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in
the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, "Let us go back to
Judea.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that
Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard that
Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said
to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus
said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said, “I know he will rise in the
resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the
life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and
everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She
said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and
said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And
Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him. ”But some of them
said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have
done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It
was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus
said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord,
by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said
to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of
God?” So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I
know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said
this, that they may believe that you sent me. ”And when he had said this, He
cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied
hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So
Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and
seen what he had done began to believe in him.
On Christmas Eve I met a friendly young Irishman working as a security guard in a Dublin hospital. He told me that he believed in Egyptian gods. I was somewhat taken aback as I had never met anyone before with such beliefs. Our conversation was very brief. Later, as so often happens, I thought of what might have been a helpful question: Which of those gods died for you?
In today's gospel we read: Jesus said to her, “Your brother will
rise.” Martha said, “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in
me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me
will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come
to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into
the world.”
So often I
have heard people, usually Catholics, say something along these lines: We're
all on the same road and we all believe in the same God. Not true. Jesus
says very clearly to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. It
is only through Jesus Christ that we can attain heaven. Jesus teaches this to
us again in John 14:5-6, Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How
can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way,
and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.
In this incident Jesus is drawing his disciples - and us - to faith in him. He says that explicitly to them before they go to Bethany: Lazarus has died,and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. He also draws Martha into her wonderful expression of faith: Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world. This is before he raises her brother Lazarus from the dead. Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.
That faith in Jesus Christ is also faith in our bodily resurrection at the end of time. When we pray the Nicene Creed at Mass on Sundays and solemnities we pray, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. We say the same thing if we pray the Apostle's Creed instead of the Nicene Creed, I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Commenting on today's gospel in his Angelus talk on 9 March 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said, Christ's heart is divine-human: in him God and man meet perfectly, without separation and without confusion. He is the image, or rather, the incarnation of God who is love, mercy, paternal and maternal tenderness, of God who is Life.
Drawing our attention to Martha's expression of faith, Pope Benedict says, It is a question that Jesus addresses to each one of us: a question that certainly rises above us, rises above our capacity to understand, and it asks us to entrust ourselves to him as he entrusted himself to the Father. Martha's response is exemplary: 'Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world' (Jn 11: 27). Yes, O Lord! We also believe, notwithstanding our doubts and darkness; we believe in you because you have the words of eternal life. We want to believe in you, who give us a trustworthy hope of life beyond life, of authentic and full life in your Kingdom of light and peace.
May that too become the prayer of the young man I met at the hospital in Dublin on Christmas Eve and others like him.
I am the Resurrection
and the Life
Karen Davis with Steve Carpenter
Traditional Latin Mass
Passion Sunday
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 03-26-2023 if necessary).
GospelJohn 9:1-41 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
[For the shorter form (9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38) omit
the text in brackets.]
As Jesus passed by, he saw a man
blind from birth.[And his disciples
asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the
works of God might be displayed in him.We must work the works of him who sent me while it
is day; night is coming, when no one can work.As long as I am in the world, I am the
light of the world.”]Having said these things,] he
spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the
man's eyes with the mudand said to him, “Go, wash
in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So
he went and washed and came back seeing.
The neighbours and those who had
seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to
sit and beg?”Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but
he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”[So they said to him, “Then how were your
eyes opened?”He
answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to
me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I
do not know.”]
They brought to the Pharisees the
man who had formerly been blind.Now it
was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.So the Pharisees again asked him how he had
received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed,
and I see.”Some of
the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep
the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such
signs?” And there was a division among them.So they said again to the blind man, “What
do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a
prophet.”
[The Jews did not believe that he
had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the
man who had received his sightand asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born
blind? How then does he now see?”His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that
he was born blind.But
how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he
is of age. He will speak for himself.”(His parents said these things because they feared the
Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess
Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.)Therefore his parents said, “He is of
age; ask him.”
So for the second
time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory
to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he
is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now
I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your
eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not
listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his
disciples?” And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple,
but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses,
but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man
answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he
comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not
listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshipper of God and does his will,
God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that
anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God,
he could do nothing.” ] They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you
teach us?” And they cast him out.
Jesus heard that they had cast
him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of
Man?”He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in
him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is
speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe”, and he worshipped
him. Jesus said, “For judgement I came into this world, that
those who do not see may see, and those who see may become
blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to
him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were
blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see’, your
guilt remains."
Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe”, and he worshipped him.
The blind man met Jesus, heard him and believed.
Our Christian faith is a gift that can be lost by an individual and by a whole community. The Church flourished in North Africa and in the Middle East before Islam came into being but the vast majority lost the gift of our faith. In our own lifetime the faith has been rapidly disappearing from places such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Quebec. Sixty years ago these places were still sending missionaries to every part of the world and their seminaries were full. Now most of those seminaries have been closed. Just over 100 years ago CICM brothers and priests (Scheut Missionaries, Missionhurst) and ICM Sisters went to the mountains of northern Luzon in the Philippines from a part of Europe that is as flat as a billiard table, most of Belgium and the Netherlands. In February 2014 Belgium made it legal for sick children to be killed, to be put down like sick animals. There was little international reaction to this, though there was to the putting down of a healthy giraffe in a zoo in Denmark a few days earlier.
There still are people in these places and others like them who are living the Christian life faithfully, often heroically. Martyrs such as Fr Ragheed Ganni of Iraq and politician Shahbaz Bhatti of Pakistan are outstanding examples. Another is the late Professor Jérôme Lejeune, doctor and researcher, who in 1958 discovered the cause of Down Syndrome (trisomy 21).
In so many places in the gospel we find Jesus going out to those considered unimportant such as the blind man in today's gospel. In what is now largely a post-Christian Western world the opposite is happening. Children in the womb who are considered 'defective' in one way or another are aborted. Because of pre-natal testing the number of children being born with Down Syndrome has gone down considerably - because they have been killed in the womb. (See here.)
At the recent Oscar awards ceremony a short movie from Northern Ireland, An Irish Goodbye, won an Oscar. Its star, James Martin was celebrating his 31st birthday the same day. He is the first person with Down Syndrome to share in an Oscar award.
Dr Lejeune cared passionately for the lives of persons with Down Syndrome and feared that society would see them as worthless, not worthy of being born. He said, The real danger is in mankind; in the increasingly worrisome imbalance between its power, which grows daily, and its wisdom, which sometimes seems to regress.
Some of the people around the blind man in today's were the ones who were truly blind, who could not see what was truly real. They could not see God's love for the man born blind. They saw the blind man as being punished for his sins and Jesus as a sinner for breaking the sabbath laws. Jesus overturned their very narrow world.
The video below invites us to overturn our own world, as the Gospel invites us to do, and to see it as Jérôme Lejeune did, with the eyes of Jesus as He saw the man born blind. And may we always treasure the gift of our Christian faith that gives us that sight.
Solemnity of St Joseph
This year the Solemnity of St Joseph is moved to Monday 20 March. The Sundays of Lent take precedence over solemnities.
Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted (John 6:11; Gospel).
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