Hosanna to the Son of David!

03-24-2024Pastor's LetterVery Rev. Richard C. Wilson, VF, Pastor

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today is a very special day. We come dressed for a feast and carrying palms in our hands because Holy Week is starting. For forty days we have followed the path of conversion and penance. There are two contradictory feelings in our hearts: on the one hand, joy at seeing Christ make a solemn entrance into Jerusalem and be proclaimed king; on the other, sorrow from knowing what he will suffer for us in a few days. Offended, betrayed, beaten, humiliated! We are going to see him climb up Calvary with the Cross on his shoulders and die for us.

Palm Sunday is the gateway through which we enter Holy Week. On Thursday we will celebrate the Last Supper, in which Jesus leaves us his Body and Blood, institutes the priesthood, and gives us his commandment to love one another. On Friday, we will go with him to his Passion and Death. Saturday will be a day of mourning, but that night, at the Easter Vigil, we will recall his passage from death back to life, and we will renew our baptismal commitments.

Everything that is going to happen this week will trouble us and fill us with sorrow: the Son of God, who came into the world to free the poor and the suffering, decides to live out in his own body the experience of defeat, of the silence of God, of death. The Good Shepherd becomes the sacrificial lamb; the Sower becomes the grain of wheat that dies; the Lord becomes the servant wounded by suffering, as the prophet Isaiah foretold.

This is the Jesus we want to follow, because we believe in Him, because we know that his Cross is the source of life, because we already feel in ourselves the light of the resurrection that we will celebrate in a week.

May we not allow these days of grace to go to waste. Here are some very good ideas: fully participate in the Holy Week liturgies; find time to read and meditate the Gospel account of the last days of Jesus; if anyone is sick, let them unite their sufferings to Christ's for the salvation of sinners; or as we meditate on the Crucifixion, let us think of our own death, and prepare for it with faith; help someone who is terminally ill, by drawing them closer to receive the last sacraments. We truly have great needs, and our Savior’s passion, death and resurrection is for all of us!

All the best…in Christ,

Father Wilson