Dear Parishioners, next Sunday with Palm Sunday, we will be beginning Holy Week. This is the most important and solemn week of the Church’s calendar that includes the Paschal Mystery, which culminates with Our Lord’s Resurrection - the definitive saving event of our salvation. On Palm Sunday, the Church recalls the entrance of Christ the Lord into Jerusalem to accomplish his Paschal Mystery. Accordingly, the memorial of this entrance of the Lord will take place at the 10 am with the Solemn Procession. Thus, we will begin the Solemn Procession in St. Mary’s Parish Hall at the 10 am mass.  

   Every year on Palm Sunday at the Procession we begin with hearing the Gospel about Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And then at mass we stand to hear Our Lord’s Passion, his suffering and death that will come a few days later. Palm Sunday’s particular lesson emerges that on Palm Sunday the crowd shouts, “Hosanna to the King!” and a few days later on Good Friday they shout, “Crucify him!” We see clearly how fleeting the glory and affirmation of the world really are. This is a lesson for us, so in the vicissitudes of our own life, from glory to the cross, we are firmly in God’s loving providence. 

   Jesus was not surprised by the cross and was not dragged unwilling to it. He accepted and embraced it, he knew it was part of the saving mission the Father had ordained for him. As he passed through the cheering crowds, he knew what lay ahead, out of love he presses on. And so, we press on through the glories and the crosses of life to whatever our Lord has for each of us on our way to salvation. Jesus walks with us. This year, as we begin Holy Week, I pray that we all might renew our trust in God’s providence in our lives. Each of us is meant to share by grace in Jesus’ destiny: crucified and now risen. So, when the crosses come we need not fear that God has forsaken us, but is rather an invitation to unite ourselves to the redemptive love of Jesus.