Palm Sunday: From Hosanna to Alleluia

Luke 19.28-40 ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ (The Gospel of the Palms)

Isaiah 50.4-7 ‘I his not my face from disgrace, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.’

Philippians 2.6-11 ‘He humbled himself, therefore God has highly exalted him.’

Luke 23.1-49 The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (The Passion Gospel)

 

+

The most powerful week of the year is upon us.

Each year we mark this Holy Week to reveal again the deepest mysteries of our faith.

Seven days that changed, and still change, the world.

This Holy Week echoes the first week of the Creation, because it is a week of New Creation.

Today ‘hosannas’ ring out; shouts of acclamation go up and palm branches wave.

As the week unfolds Christ whispers the New Commandment: ‘love one another as I have loved you’ and declares his enduring, life-giving presence in the sacrament: ‘this is my body; this is my blood’.

On Friday shouts of ‘crucify him’ fill the air; and on the cross Jesus cries, ‘all is accomplished’.

And as the week closes, stillness descends before a new week begins with cries of ‘alleluia, he is risen’.

On the first day of Creation light was created; as on the first day of each week, Sunday by Sunday, we gather as Christians to bathe in the uncreated light of Christ.

The week of the Creation unfolds with abundance: light and darkness, sun, moon and stars, vegetation, fish, animals all find their place in God’s intentions.

On the sixth day of the week of creation mankind is created in the very image of God, ‘male and female, he created them’; on the sixth day of Holy Week the fulness of humanity, Jesus Christ, dies upon the cross.

On the seventh day of the week of Creation – the Sabbath - God rests; on the seventh day of Holy Week, Christ’s body lies still, in the tomb.

As the day gives way to the night on Saturday, we will keep vigil: watching and praying for the signs of God’s redeeming power.

That vigil will re-present deep, ancient prophecy, that is fulfilled in Christ, the One who comes in the name of the Lord.

Our Easter Vigil gathers us together in expectant hope of the eighth day of Creation, the Day of Resurrection, when we declare ‘The Light of Christ’ as surely as God, in the beginning, declared, ‘Let there be light’.

In that proclamation God brought order, meaning and purpose to a world of swirling, surging waters; Christ now plunges into the deep waters of death to bring order, meaning, purpose, hope and life in a world and peoples’ lives that swirl with chaos.

In Jesus Christ creation and humanity are being restored!

Holy Week invites us on a journey of faith when we walk the way of the Cross with Christ: may our ‘hosannas’ today give way to Easter Day ‘alleluias’ that resound throughout our lives.