Entering Holy Week

One of the most beautiful experiences of my life was the privilege of serving as a deacon on Palm Sunday in Saint Peter's Square with Pope John Paul II.  Hundreds of thousands of faithful filled the square and down the Via Conciliazione, lifting their palm branches for the Holy Father's blessing and beginning with such deep faith these most holy days of the Church's year.  I was recalling that experience today as I watched Pope Francis begin Holy Week with that same Palm Sunday liturgy but in an almost empty Saint Peter's Basilica.  But the liturgy was just as solemn and beautiful as it always is, inviting each of us to begin this year's journey through Holy Week.

It will be different for all of us.  Those liturgies that are so important to our lives 0f faith and to which we look forward to each year  with such graet longing will go on,  but now without the faithful and only a handful of essential ministers.  Our absence from those liturgies is a sacrifice being asked of us in these extraoardinary times.  We must embrace the Cross with love and not with bitterness or anger, with understanding and compassion, not with a lack of trust. Truly, we are joined spiritually to Our Lord this week in a deep and profound way.  We are experiencing the Cross and suffering in ways that perhaps none of us have every known.  And while we may find ourselves focusing on our own personal hardships in these times, we must think of others. Our hearts are heavy with sorrow at the loss of so many lives and we lift up our prayers for those who are sick and dying, and those grieving.  We lift up in our prayers those in health care and public safety, and those providing the essential services for people's survival and ask God to protect them and to keep them safe from harm.

We are not able to lift up our palm branches this year for that blessing. We cannot physically come together in our churches for the celebration of those beautiful, important and inspiring liturgies.   But we can share more deeply this year in the Passion of Jesus. We can join our sorrow, our anxiety and fear, our sadness and our pain to the sufferings of our Lord for the good of the Church, for the salvation of souls, and in thanksgiving for the abundant graces that God pours so generously and freely into our hearts.    

Let us take the words from Our Holy Father's homily to heart:

"Today, in the tragedy of a pandemic, in the face of the many false securities that have now crumbled, in the face of so many hopes betrayed, in the sense of abandonment that weighs upon our hearts, Jesus says to each one of us: ‘Courage, open your heart to my love,'” The tragedy we are experiencing summons us to take seriously the things that are serious, and not to be caught up in those that matter less, to rediscover that life is of no use if not used to serve others. Dear friends, look at the real heroes who come to light these days: they are not famous, rich and successful people. They are those who are giving themselves in order to serve others. Feel called yourselves to put your lives on the line.  Just as Jesus did for each us."

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