THE LITURGICAL YEAR

Sermons, hymns, meditations and other musings to guide our annual pilgrim's progress through the liturgical year.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

NOT AS I WILL, BUT AS THOU WILT

A SERMON FOR PALM SUNDAY


One of the most poignant moments in St. Matthew’s Passion comes in the Garden of Gethsemane when Our Lord is so overcome with emotion that he falls down on his face.  And lying there on the ground, he manages to lift his head a little, and raise his voice to his Father in heaven, with these words:  “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

We stand today on the threshold of Holy Week.  A week filled with suffering.  Our remembrance of our Saviour’s sufferings for us.  As the week relentlessly proceeds, we are drawn closer and closer to the Cross, until at last on Good Friday, we walk the hill of Calvary with Our Lord, we stand beneath that Cross as he is raised upon it, we listen to his last words, and we watch him die.  And if there is love in our heart, any love at all, for that Saviour who gave so much that we might live, we are moved to tears of grief at these terrible sights.  We weep with Our Blessed Lady, his Mother, we weep with St. John, his beloved disciple, we weep with the Angels.

It is good that we weep.  But how quickly do we forget our tears as the joys of Easter replace these dark days with the glorious good news of our Salvation, as Our Blessed Lord rises from the dead.  In one sense, this is as it should be.  The glorious mysteries of the Rosary have every bit as much right to our attention and emotions as the sorrowful.  But it is perhaps a sign of our own shallowness, that as soon as those happy festival days of Eastertide are come, we tend so quickly to forget our tears, to the point where we actually turn our back on the price of that happiness that we are then enjoying.  That heavy price which is the bitter suffering of the Son of God made Man.

How do I know we turn our back on his suffering?  It’s very simple when you think about it.  It’s because we are so very ready to turn our back on our own sufferings, our own crosses!  We are so very ready to pray with Our Lord: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” – without bothering to pray the second part.  We just say: “O God, take away this suffering from me.  It’s more than I can bear.  It’s not fair I have to suffer when I try so hard to be a good person.  Why don’t you punish sinners with crosses like this, instead of giving them to me?  What did I do to deserve this?”

And we forget the second half of Our Lord’s prayer: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  “Thy will be done!”

“Aha!” says the blasphemer, as if he has stumbled across some profound and thought-provoking truth, “What kind of God do you Christians worship that wills suffering?  How can a loving God allow suffering in the world?  All he has to do is snap his fingers and we could all be perfectly happy right now.  So why doesn’t he?”
 
It’s a question we have all struggled with at some time or other.  Usually when we are suffering, naturally.  Sometimes the overwhelming depths of woe we encounter in our lives threaten to drag us under into the cold, dark abyss of despair.  But only if we have completely the wrong idea of who God truly is.  Only if our superficial picture of God is nothing at all like the all-loving, caring Creator that he actually is.

I want to explain to you today something which is of vital importance in each of our lives.  My message to you is perhaps not something you will need today, or tomorrow.  But I guarantee that each of you will need it some day.  We all have to suffer eventually, some most bitterly.  But there is consolation to be found in our suffering if only we would look at it the right way.

I told you last week that we need to be men and women of courage to be able to carry our crosses with Jesus up the hill of Calvary.  I’m talking about real courage, ‘true grit’.  The kind of courage that trembles each time before pronouncing the words of the Angelus “Be it done unto me according to thy Word,” or before hearing those words of Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane:  “Not as I will, but as thou wilt”.  These are the men and women of courage who tremble, yes… but they repeat those words anyway.  They repeat them as their own.  “Yes Lord, I want to do thy will, not mine.  Thy will be done.”  These are the men and women God is looking for in his Church.  These are the men and women who would never condemn themselves to mediocrity and advance no further.  These are rather the men and women who will take up their cross and follow their Saviour to Calvary.

One little saint who had such courage was St. Catherine of Siena.  In a vision, Jesus presented her with two crowns, one made of gold, fashioned with diamonds and glistening jewels, and the other one made up of thorns.  He asked her to choose which of the two crowns she would like to have.  Her answer was astonishing: "I desire, O Lord, to live here always conformed to your passion, and to find pain and suffering my repose and delight."  Then, she eagerly took up the crown of thorns, and pressed it down upon her head.  Do you have that kind of courage?  For sure enough, her life was transformed into one of terrible pain and sorrow.  You need to be careful what you ask for.  But if you are a generous soul, full of the love of God, and not one of those superficial types who weep a few forced tears of compassion for Our Lord this Holy Week, if and only if you are generous and courageous enough to repeat Our Lord’s words during his Agony, and mean them, “Not as I will, but thy will be done,” then you will surely merit to weep great torrents in your lifetime, and be swept along in the tidal wave of your tears of suffering into the eternal and immeasurable love of God.

RIDE ON, RIDE ON IN MAJESTY

A HYMN FOR PALM SUNDAY


Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Hear all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Saviour meek, pursue thy road
With palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, thy triumphs now begin
O’er captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The hosts of angels in the sky
Look down with sad and wond’ring eyes
To see th’approaching sacrifice.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh.
The Father on his sapphire throne
Awaits his own anointed Son.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die,
Bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O Christ, thy pow’r and reign.

By Henry Hart Milman, 1827

HOSANNA AND OTHER WORDS

A MESSAGE FOR Palm Sunday


What a tremendous contradiction is contained in today’s liturgy.  We begin with the commemoration of the triumphant entry of our Lord into his holy city of Jerusalem, a glorious reminder that Christ is King.  And then we move forward to the events that were to occur later in that holiest of history’s weeks, reading St. Matthew’s Passion, and meditating on each detail of the humiliation suffered by this same Christ the King. 

But is it really a contradiction?  Or are we seeing only the outward appearances and ignoring the real meaning behind them?  Is it not, after all, the essence of Christ’s kingship that his crown is one of thorns, and that all the splendid hosannas that we sing so fervently on Palm Sunday will quickly give way to our own betrayal of our Lord once we leave Mass today?  Betrayal?  It’s a strong word, but how else could we describe our sinful actions, the neglect of our prayers and other religious duties, all the terrible and secret wickedness of our lives with which we blithely indulge ourselves so soon after meditating on Christ’s sufferings?

Christ rides into Jerusalem in triumph.  The people laud him and strew his way with palm leaves.  By Friday of this week they will be shouting out again as our Lord is brought before them, words no longer of love and adoration, but of hatred, not “Hosanna” but “Crucify him.”  Almost everyone he knew would let him down, from Judas who would do the unthinkable for thirty miserable pieces of silver, to St. Peter who would deny him three times.  The apostles who had witnessed his glorious Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, would now sleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, ignoring the agony of their Master, whose soul was suffering “even unto death.”  Are we any better?

Ironically, it is precisely because we are sinners, that Christ chose to suffer these humiliations and pain.  If our souls were stainless, there would have been no reason for him to die for us.  It is not our hosannas that nailed him to the cross, but all those unpleasant little secrets that we whisper to the priest in the confessional, all those thoughts, words and deeds by which we choose to crucify him.  But the greater the sin, the greater love he showed in forgiving us. 

Only one person lived up to the expectations of our loving God.  Only one had a soul that was truly immaculate, and who never offended, or denied, or betrayed her Son.  This Blessed Mother is the one we must turn to this week.  We go to holy Mary because she truly is holy, holy on an entirely different level from the other saints.  We go to her at this time of her Son’s crucifixion to share her pain, ironically because she is the only one who does not share our sins.  Be assured she will share God’s graces and clemency with us, helping us reach a heaven we don’t deserve, but whose gates were nevertheless opened to us by her Son.  Hosanna!