KEEP THE HOSANNAS RINGING

 A SERMON FOR PALM SUNDAY

The worst way to spend Holy Week is to avoid, completely avoid, thinking about the terrible sufferings our Lord went through from his Agony in the Garden to the Crucifixion.  So many people don’t give them a second thought, and for them, this Holy Week is no different than any other week of the year.  Maybe a few of them set aside a tiny amount of time to scatter Easter eggs round their garden and prepare the bunny trail for their children.  But most don’t even do that.

As Catholics, we are expected to do more.  This is the holiest week of the year.  We should redouble our penances, make the Stations of the Cross, increase our prayer time, observe the Three Hours of Silence from noon until 3pm on Good Friday, attend church services where they’re being held, and generally devote our week to our blessed Lord and his sorrowful Mother.  It is a good and meritorious act to meditate on the sufferings of our Lord.  Even more graces are received when we are stirred to a greater and love of our Saviour, if we are moved to tears of compassion and contrition.  And yet, there can still be something missing.

In the Gospel reading made during the ceremony of the Blessing of Palms, we read how our Lord entered into the Holy City of Jerusalem, how the crowds “spread their garments in the way”, cutting down branches from the palm trees and strewing them on the roadway on which our Lord rode in.  They surrounded him, crying out “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!”  Just a few days later their words would have changed dramatically, and would echo out over the same streets of Jerusalem, “Crucify him, crucify him”.

This is the danger we face today.  That we are filled with inspiration on Palm Sunday and shout our hosannas, resolving to make the best Holy Week ever.  And yet, before we even reach Good Friday, we fall yet again into sin.  Perhaps even mortal sin.  We forget how our reading of the Passion today inspired us with the love of a Saviour who would suffer so much for us.  And we turn our backs on that same blessed Redeemer we think we love so much, and blithely start offending him all over again.  We make the tragic error of thinking we can love God and offend him at the same time.  And we forget that it is these very offences that caused those sufferings in the first place.

Life is not a game.  We can’t outwit God as if we’re playing chess with him.  We can’t confess the same sins over and over again and then walk out of the confessional as though nothing had happened, never giving another thought to our pathetic resolution to sin no more.  It’s as though we’re trying to cheat our way into heaven.  God is not mocked.  He can take any one of us without warning, and the more we play that dangerous game of sinning, confessing, sinning, the greater the risk he will punish us—eternally—for our shameful lack of fortitude.  Take a lesson from the citizens of Jerusalem and don’t follow their bad example.  They, who on Sunday hailed him as their Messiah, were there in the courtyard of Pontius Pilate on Good Friday, crying out for him to be crucified, gloating over his torments.  Don’t follow their mistake of  thinking such betrayal goes unnoticed by the Most High.  Learn by their punishment—just a few years later the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem and demolished the Temple, leaving not a stone upon a stone.  God is not mocked.

Our example should be that of the Saviour himself, who gave no heed to the shouts of hosanna, but resolutely rode into his Holy City of Jerusalem, knowing full well what the consequences would be, and what those hosannas would turn out to be worth.  We must follow him, not the crowd.  Follow God, not the idle whims of a wicked world.  Use this Holy Week as though it were your last opportunity to make your final peace with God.  Because maybe it will be.