Palm Sunday: The crimes of despising another or betraying a friend, and all sins, are healed in the betrayal and rejection of Jesus Christ

"Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me,
one who is eating with me."

There are some injuries that so deeply rend the fabric of human existence, that are so terrible to contemplate or experience that even the thought of them can result in a gut-wrenching kind of physical sensation of revulsion. This can be the case whether we are the perpetrator or the object of such injuries and the sins which provoke them.

The act of despising another human person because of their weakness, or for whatever reason, is profoundly anti-human and does violence not only to the person so despised but at the same time violates the humanity of the one who thus turns away from authentic compassion and brotherly love. Despising another reveals a deep form of self-rejection in the human person for it is one's own humanity which is in fact rejected when one despises one's neighbor. The betrayal of a friend is also an act deeply violating both to the one rejected and the one who chooses to turn away from the bond.

We are all human beings: our experiences of temptations or weaknesses, though different for each one of us, are in some way shared by all of us. When one of us despises another because of his or her weaknesses or the ugliness of marred humanity because of the effect of sin, it sunders us from the other person in a very deep way, causing an injury that wounds us to the heart and marrow of our existence. When we have shared the close bond of friendship, whether within the family or beyond it, and that relationship is broken in a way that seems beyond all repair this, too, can cause deep and lasting effects which are like a wound to the person, causing lasting impairment to the spirit and mind.

In this Holy Week, beginning with today's Palm Sunday procession and Mass, we accompany Jesus Christ again through his physical, visible suffering on the streets and hills of Jerusalem. Though he suffered and died 2,000 years ago, He tells us that His Passion continues today because of sin: "when you reject them, you reject Me."

We see in the Body and Blood shed by Christ the price that is paid, the act of love made necessary by the only One who is capable of repairing what has been broken by our sins, whether visible like the broken, beaten and crucified body of Jesus Christ or the invisible kind of evil which is a hidden corruption.

" ... he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father."

In the rejection and murder of Jesus Christ is found both the story of and the answer to each and every instance of human betrayal and discord, for "by his wounds we are healed". It is in the betrayal of Jesus Christ which results in the sacrifice for sin that all sins now must find their healing, for only in Jesus Christ is God's mercy made available for each of us. This happens in the most intense way in the Church through the sacramental life. On our altars now is consecrated, offered and received the same Jesus Christ who died on the Cross 2,000 years ago. He is present again to involve us and our wounded sinfulness in His Divine embrace which binds us up and makes us whole again.

"It is precisely in the Passion, when the mercy of Christ is about to vanquish it, that sin most clearly manifests its violence and its many forms: unbelief, murderous hatred, shunning and mockery by the leaders and the people, Pilate's cowardice and the cruelty of the soldiers, Judas' betrayal - so bitter to Jesus, Peter's denial and the disciples' flight. However, at the very hour of darkness, the hour of the prince of this world, the sacrifice of Christ secretly becomes the source from which the forgiveness of our sins will pour forth inexhaustibly." (CCC 1851)

Sin and death will not have the last word.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.

Friday, Fifth Week of Lent: "I have shown you many good works from my Father"

We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.

--Jn 10:31-42

From the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, certain Pharisees and partisans of Herod together with priests and scribes agreed together to destroy him. Because of certain acts of his expelling demons, forgiving sins, healing on the sabbath day, his novel interpretation of the precepts of the Law regarding purity, and his familiarity with tax collectors and public sinners -- some ill-intentioned persons suspected Jesus of demonic possession. He is accused of blasphemy and false prophecy, religious crimes which the Law punished with death by stoning.

-- CCC 574

Thursday, Fifth Week of Easter: "it is my Father who glorifies me"

before Abraham came to be, I AM

--Jn 8:51-59

Only the divine identity of Jesus' person can justify so absolute a claim as "He who is not with me is against me"; and his saying that there was in him "something greater than Jonah,. . . greater than Solomon", something "greater than the Temple"; his reminder that David had called the Messiah his Lord, and his affirmations, "Before Abraham was, I AM", and even "I and the Father are one."

-- CCC 590

Wednesday, Fifth Week of Lent: "I came from God"

and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me

-- Jn 8:31-42

The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God.

-- CCC 262

Tuesday, Fifth Week of Lent: "you will realize that I AM"

When you lift up the Son of Man

-- Jn 8:21-30

"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." The lifting up of Jesus on the cross signifies and announces his lifting up by his Ascension into heaven, and indeed begins it. Jesus Christ, the one priest of the new and eternal Covenant, "entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands. . . but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf." There Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, for he "always lives to make intercession" for "those who draw near to God through him". As "high priest of the good things to come" he is the center and the principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven.

-- CCC 662

Solemnity of the Annunciation: "the Lord himself will give you this sign"

the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel

-- Is 7:10-14; 8:10

Mary gave her consent in faith at the Annunciation and maintained it without hesitation at the foot of the Cross. Ever since, her motherhood has extended to the brothers and sisters of her Son "who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties." Jesus, the only mediator, is the way of our prayer; Mary, his mother and ours, is wholly transparent to him: she "shows the way" (hodigitria), and is herself "the Sign" of the way, according to the traditional iconography of East and West.

-- CCC 2674

Art: Fra Angelico, Annunciation, 1433-34. Tempera on wood, 150 x 180 cm,, Museo Diocesano, Cortona.

Fifth Sunday of Lent B: "The days are coming when I will make a new covenant": the Passion of Jesus Christ at work in the Church and the world

These are effervescent times in which to live. There are so many things happening in the world and there are unprecedented accesses to information, news and entertainment as never before. We can feel as though we are inundated under the waves of data, images and events that come to us through cell phones, the internet and television.

The signs of the times urge us to find an answer to understanding the many events, people and things that compete for our attention in the life of our families, our communities and the world. The HHS mandate and the work of the Bishops urging us to assist in the effort to rescind it, the conflicts of the world that find their way into our Church with controversies surrounding a priest's decision to deny Communion to a woman at her mother's funeral Mass, the drive to use the name "marriage" to describe styles of living that are indeed not marriage, the fight for religious freedom, the killing of Trayvon Martin, these and many other events create a sense of being sometimes overwhelmed and urge us to seek a hermeneutic key for understanding and interpreting them, making sense of them.

In the new covenant which God reveals through the Blood of His Son we have an answer. There is a new movie getting a lot of attention. "The Hunger Games" celebrates death: the death of young people who are set upon each other for the entertainment of their parents, the elders in society. The Passion of the Lord which we will follow closely in the life of the Church in these coming days is the very opposite of this: the Father gives Himself completely over to His children in the Son who make sport of Him, mock Him, and put Him to death. Through this injustice God brings perfect justice, that of Divine love, into the world through a "new" covenant: that of the Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

"The nuptial covenant between God and his people Israel had prepared the way for the new and everlasting covenant in which the Son of God, by becoming incarnate and giving his life, has united to himself in a certain way all mankind saved by him, thus preparing for 'the wedding-feast of the Lamb.' " (CCC 1612)

How does the new covenant in the Blood of Jesus Christ help us to interpret and understand the signs of the times?

God must be given complete freedom to save the world and, thus, any eclipsing of the freedom of His Church is a strike against the mission of the Son which comes to the world through the Church. The color of Trayvon's skin is completely irrelevant to the injustice of his death if indeed he was unarmed: he is created like every human person in the image of his Creator and God says this enough reason in itself to call for respect for the right to life and justice. The HHS mandate forces the Body of Christ to pay for moral evils such as artificial contraception, abortion and sterilization which violate the truths about human dignity revealed by the Divine Person Jesus Christ in the new covenant. The denial of holy Communion to manifest public and unrepentant sinners itself is a call to salvation, a medicinal application of God's law to call even Barbara Johnson and Maryland Governer Martin O'Malley and others who should be denied the Sacrament wherever they present themselves for such, as they by their own words and actions have set themselves against Jesus Christ and the Church through which He comes to us and saves us today.

And what is Jesus Christ doing now for the working out of the new covenant? In the life of the Church He continues the work of salvation as His vicar on earth, Pope Benedict XVI, reaches out in compassion and love by visiting the people of Cuba and Mexico. And they in turn are reaching out in faith to be with him as they come out in great multitudes in witness of the Faith. We are here in the house of God to keep the Lord's Day holy together in the solidarity of Faith which is the grace of the new covenant by which we work out our salvation in fear and trembling.

Our hunger for salvation is no "game". And God who is most sincere in love feeds this hunger through the new covenant with the Body and Blood of His Son Jesus Christ who is one with the Father through the Holy Spirit.