Dear Parishioners, this Sunday, Palm Sunday, begins Holy Week. Today we read the Passion Narrative. It is the narrative that will be played out in this week’s Holy Week liturgies.
Please join us on Holy Thursday for evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 5:30 pm. There we will re-enact when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and then carry the Blessed Sacrament to the altar of repose where Jesus goes into the garden and bids his disciples to “keep watch.” The altar will be set up in St. Mary’s parish hall and open for prayer until 10 pm that evening. On Good Friday, at 3 pm, we will accompany our Lord on his journey to Mount Calvary where he will die for love of us. There, we will have the opportunity to venerate the cross. Also that evening, we will have the last Stations of the Cross at 6 pm at St. Mary’s. There is no meal after Stations on Good Friday.
On Holy Saturday, at the Easter Vigil beginning at 8:30 pm, we start at the Easter Fire with the lighting of the Easter Candle carried into the dark church with the chant “The light of Christ” or “Lumen Christi”. Then we have a tour through Scripture starting with Creation and the fall through the Plan of Salvation to Christ. And finally, it is the first “Alleluia” of Easter, He is risen!
The Passion narratives we hear this Sunday from Mark are full of surprises as we see how different people respond in various moments. Certainly, we are surprised to see Jesus’ closest disciples fall asleep and abandon Him after having spent three years following our Lord. We are also surprised to see that one of Jesus’ own friends turns into a traitor while another of His friends denies Him three times. There are other surprises as well, like when we see a woman offer her precious gift of perfume to anoint Jesus, or when we read of Joseph of Arimathea coming forth to claim the body of Jesus for burial, or even when we hear the Roman Centurion—who had brutally treated Jesus and crucified Him—now profess his faith in the Lord.
Indeed, the mystery of discipleship is full of surprises. A person’s past responses don’t indicate their future response. We all have a choice on how we are going to respond to Jesus, even if in the past we have rejected Jesus and the Gospel. We think about the Good Thief hanging next to Jesus, he made a choice for Jesus at the very end of his life. Or the response of Judas or John. What will our response to Jesus be?