Dear St. Mary Friends,
And so we come to the climax of Lent, Holy Week. May you all enter into the mystery of Christ, his Body and Blood, sacrifice on the Cross, and Resurrection. Also, please check the schedule of the various liturgies this week. This reflection on Palm Sunday by Pope Benedict XVI offers us a good beginning:
Dear brothers and sisters, may these days call forth two sentiments in particular: praise, after the example of those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with their “Hosanna!”, and thanksgiving, because in this Holy Week the Lord Jesus will renew the greatest gift we could possibly imagine: he will give us his life, his body and his blood, his love.
But we must respond worthily to so great a gift, with the gift of ourselves, our time, our prayer, our entering into a profound communion of love with Christ who suffered, died and rose for us. The early Church Fathers saw a symbol of all this in the gesture of the people who followed Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem, the gesture of spreading out their coats before the Lord. Before Christ – the Fathers said – we must spread out our lives, ourselves, in an attitude of gratitude and adoration.
Let us listen to the words of one of them, Saint Andrew of Crete: “So it is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace... so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet ... Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel’”. Amen!
Blessings,
