2013 Lent has been one marked with major changes and events in our Catholic Church — one Holy Father retiring, electing a new pope and becoming familiar with the new Vicar of Christ. In spite of all these happenings, the pace of our faith continues in a faithful way. Today is Palm Sunday and marks the beginning of Holy Week. Let’s meditate on these words taken from then Pope Benedict XVI’s homily on 2012 Palm Sunday.
[quote style=”boxed”]Dear brothers and sisters, may these days call forth two sentiments in particular: praise, after the example of those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with their ‘Hosanna!’, and thanksgiving, because in this Holy Week the Lord Jesus will renew the greatest gift we could possibly imagine: he will give us his life, his body and his blood, his love. But we must respond worthily to so great a gift, that is to say, with the gift of ourselves, our time, our prayer, our entering into a profound communion of love with Christ who suffered, died and rose for us. The early Church Fathers saw a symbol of all this in the gesture of the people who followed Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem, the gesture of spreading out their coats before the Lord. Before Christ – the Fathers said – we must spread out our lives, ourselves, in an attitude of gratitude and adoration. As we conclude, let us listen once again to the words of one of these early Fathers, Saint Andrew, Bishop of Crete: ‘So it is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, or with the whole Christ … so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet … let us offer not palm branches but the prizes of victory to the conqueror of death. Today let us too give voice with the children to that sacred chant, as we wave the spiritual branches of our soul: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel’” (PG 97, 994). Amen!”[/quote]In these coming solemn days of Holy Week, join me in trying to find ways that we can “spread out our lives in attitude of gratitude and adoration”. I will think of the Pope Emeritus’ words as I silently sit before the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday evening and when I bend down to kiss Christ’s pierced feet on Good Friday.