| Readings: | Luke 19:28-40 (at the procession) Isaiah 50:4-7 Philippians 2:6-11 Luke 22:14—23:56 |
| Date: | April 13, 2025, Passion (Palm) Sunday - Cycle C |
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,"Teacher, rebuke your disciples." He said in reply,"I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!"
All liturgy invites us to reflect on three separate realities: the historical event the liturgy is based on, the coming of Christ again in glory, and, what I suggest is sometimes the hardest one, the current reality that we live in. Over the course of this coming week, we will have plenty of opportunities to focus on the historical event of Jesus' paschal mystery, his living, suffering, dying and rising from the dead. At every Mass we focus as well on the promise that Jesus will come again in glory and his kingdom of peace and justice will have no end. But before we step into this week, I would ask you to reflect with me today on today, on the world and time we find ourselves living in right now.
Where are there stones crying out for Christ today? Blaise Pascal once said that Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world. And while we could think about many different ways that this statement is true, I would like to focus this morning on how this is true in the poor and marginalized in our world today. One commentator I read this week said that Jesus is nailed to the cross with nails that are the injustices, the hardships, and the humiliations that oppress the poor and the marginalized in our society. Jesus cannot come down from the cross until those nails are removed. It may be beyond our personal power, or even our Apple Valley Catholic communal power to remove them immediately and everywhere, but let us begin to start pulling them out one by one. That is what we have been baptized to do, that is the mission of the Church.
Over these past decades since I was ordained a deacon, I have asked the same question of couples bringing their child for baptism, adults preparing for their own baptism, couples preparing for marriage in the Church, and countless people in various faith formation settings. That question is what is the mission of the Church, or in other words, what is our mission as baptized members of the Church, or as a sacramentally married couple. And without exception the answer has always been something that boils down to either getting to heaven, or helping others to get to heaven. But I suggest to you that that is NOT the church's mission. Getting people to heaven is God's job. So what is ours?
There is a very ancient maxim in theology: if you want to understand what someone really believes, listen to how they pray. And what is the most Christian of all prayers? That's right, the Our Father. Where in that prayer that Jesus taught us does it say that we are to pray to go to heaven or to help others get to heaven? It doesn't. Jesus taught us to pray that the Kingdom of God come here on earth, that God's will be done, here on earth. The other petitions are asking for the means to accomplish that mission of bringing heaven here and now. The Kingdom of God is that reality where the is no poverty, no hunger, no sickness, no oppression, no war and, in the end, no death. Our mission is to make this real here on earth. Our greatest shortcoming in working that mission is that we are really good at being indifferent to poor. As a society, we are very good at insulating ourselves from the hunger, the medical needs, the absence of hope of so many in the world, in our country, in our state and even close around us.
So as we journey with Jesus this week in his Passion and resurrection, I would suggest that we keep in the forefront of our minds what he said very clearly to us: whatever you do, or don't do, to and for the least of the poor, we do to Jesus. The first step in accomplishing the mission that Jesus gave to us as disciples is to recognize him, especially in those who are on the margins. The poor and the marginalized are the stones that continue to cry out to us no matter how strongly we try to silence them. The most important thing that they cry out is see me, see Christ in me. We gather here to celebrate the Eucharist, to eat and become more fully the body of Christ which he gave up for the poor, to become the blood of Christ poured out for the poor. The poor do not need our sympathy, they need our deeds. We are to love them as Jesus loves them. This starts with our having respect for the poor and the marginalized, acknowledging their human dignity, and ultimately loving them. And then doing whatever we personally can to try to change the attitude of the world we live in to care for the poor and to treat them not just with charity, but most importantly with the justice and dignity that Christ deserves. Let us pray that God guide us to whatever that means for each one of us, remembering that this is our mission, this is what we have been baptized for.
There is a story of a man on his way to work who spies a young girl crying from hunger and shivering from the cold, Angrily he cries out to God, "Where are you? Why don't you do something for this innocent suffering girl?" Immediately within his heart he heard, "I already have! I created you!"