ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Friends in our Lord Jesus Christ,

Today, Palm Sunday, we begin our celebration of Holy Week. Already at the blessing of the palms we have made an effort to enter into the sentiments of Jesus. We have celebrated His initial triumph and now we are called upon to understand His Passion which leads up to victory and definitive triumph in the Resurrection.

The Word of God points out for us this morning the harsh conditions of Christ's victory.

In our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah we see how it was prophesied that Jesus would suffer persecution. He would be beaten, ridiculed and insulted.

Our second reading recalls the profound humility of Jesus, who took on our human condition--He became man--precisely in order to bring about our salvation. He emptied Himself. He humbled Himself and accepted death, death on the cross. And Saint Paul tells us that God the Father accepted this suffering and death and raised up Christ to glory in His Resurrection.

But before we celebrate the victory of Christ's passion and death, the Church wants us to retrace in detail the sufferings of Jesus, to recount all the steps He took--out of love--to redeem us.

And this is what we have done in the Passion of Jesus. We have accompanied Jesus. We have shared His sentiments and His attitudes. We have been challenged by His love.

In the passion narrative:

-- We see Jesus betrayed by Judas, one of His own. We understand His pain and anguish.

-- We heard the account of the Last Supper and saw how Jesus left us the Sacrifice of His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins.

-- Then we went with Jesus to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, to see how He suffered Agony in the Garden, how He prayed, and how He renewed His resolution to accomplish the Father's will.

Then came the actual embrace by Judas, and Jesus was arrested. But He had time to challenge Judas and to repeat that He was enduring all His suffering with total freedom.

Jesus was led to the High Priest, Caiaphas, where He was asked if He was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. His answer was so clear that the High Priest said that He blasphemed.

Afterwards Jesus was denied by Peter, who began to curse and swear that he did not know Him.

Judas had remorse, but it turned into despair even though Judas was in the very presence of God's mercy.

Jesus was then taken to the Roman Governor, who had Him scourged and handed over to be crucified.

On the cross Jesus gave Himself once more to His Father out of love and endured the last measure of ridicule and suffering.

Finally Jesus died and was proclaimed the Son of God.

He was placed in the tomb to await the day of Easter and the glory of His Resurrection.

Saint Paul tells us the rest. God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name--Jesus: He is the Savior of the World.

This then is the Church's Palm Sunday message for us all: Jesus Christ is Lord!