Palm Sunday and Holy Week
We made it to Palm Sunday! Lent is almost over and in a week’s time,
we can go back to eating chocolate, drinking coffee and having back whatever our Lenten sacrifice was. Palm Sunday starts out Holy Week, the most important week of the liturgical year for Catholics. At Mass, we get to wave around our palm branches, but they’re supposed to be more than a distraction, trying to make a cool palm cross during homily. Everything we’ve heard all year long from both the Old and the New Testament comes down to this. It’s a pretty big deal.
Every Sunday when hearing the Gospel at Mass, we get a snippet of Jesus’ story. When looking at a year’s worth of Gospels, we see the whole picture, but one gospel can also be a stand-alone “episode”. Just like your favorite Netflix series! Each episode follows the journey of your favorite main character. If you miss an episode though, you’re not totally lost because each episode has a plot and a message of its own. At the end of a TV series, sometimes the producers come out with a “big screen” movie adaptation or a special hour long finale for the show. That’s what I feel like Holy Week is. After a year of following our favorite character on his adventures with his 12 best friends, we get to this great finale (before all the spin-offs come out).
The movie begins. And just like any good movie, when we allow ourselves to be drawn into it, we come out feeling like we were there. We journey with Jesus as He enters Jerusalem, waving our palms and joyfully cheering and signing to the arrival of our King. “Hosanna to the Son of David”! We follow Jesus’s arrival through the events of the days. Maybe we tilt our head in confusion when Mary breaks the alabaster jar of perfume oil and anoints Jesus. Then we enter with him to the Upper Room for the Last Supper and reflect on the mystery of his words. Here comes the first plot twist. One of Jesus’s friends betrays him, which leads Jesus to his most-tragic death. Our hearts break and we cry out as we watch Jesus’s walk to Calvary. We’re given hope when we see Simon and Veronica help Jesus, but finally, we join the women looking in the distance or wait with the apostles as they join together after Jesus’s burial.
But we’ve read the book, and we know that the ultimate plot twist is coming in three days. We await Jesus’s glorious resurrection and promise of eternal life.
Palm Sunday can become routine for us, just like any other Sunday Mass. But if we imagine ourselves as a character in Jesus’ story, we can walk along side with him and follow him in the week’s journey. The time between now and Easter, we can ponder and keep the events in our hearts as we prepare for the greatest plot twist in human history. And stock up on those jelly beans, you’re going to need them.
