The
show hasn’t been on TV in nearly 20 years, so the youngsters won’t remember
this, but anybody over 30 will remember those famous words of Jim McKay at the
beginning of ABC’s Wide World of Sports every Saturday afternoon: “..bringing
you the thrill of victory...
and the agony of defeat...”
Praying
on both these Gospels today for today’s solemnity of “Palm Sunday of the
Passion of the Lord,” this came to mind, because in our first Gospel, Our
Blessed Lord experiences the thrill of victory as He’s welcomed into Jerusalem
with a hero’s welcome, the crowd wild with joyful Hosannas at the coming of the
Lord, the Messiah.
And
five days later He is subjected to what appears anyway to be the ultimate
defeat – face buffeted and spit upon, back beaten, head crowned with thorns –
and finally killed. The most horrific
death. The most shameful death. Naked, nailed to a cross. Even the title of today’s solemnity has both
victory and defeat - the “Palm Sunday” and the “Passion of the Lord.”
We
call this the “paschal mystery,” the solemn mystery of Christ’s passion and
death and then resurrection, the supreme sacrifice by which He won for you and
me the gift of our salvation. Who could
have imagined, as this innocent man hung on a tree to die a criminal’s death, that
you and I would gather here 2000 years later to commemorate and remember what
He did that afternoon?
All
this week, we will gather to remember, and to enter once again into the paschal
mystery. Why do we do it? Certainly by our remembering, in a sense we
make the past present again. We enter
into the past events. I was on a business trip to Dallas this week, and in the
evening drove downtown to visit Dealey Plaza, which anyone born before the late
1950s will remember that’s the site of the JFK assassination in 1963. Walking around that place, the grassy knoll,
the places on the street of each rifle shot, and looking back up at the school
book depository building, that fateful day in 1963 became present again.
And
each time we celebrate Eucharist, we re-present, in a real though mysterious
sense the paschal mystery, the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. Christ becomes present again in a mysterious
sense, and in a very real sense in His Body and Blood in Eucharist.
Why
do we do it? Because by entering into
the past, it can affect us, affect our lives, and we can respond. In remembering our Lord’s passion and death,
we can especially respond with deep thankfulness. Eucharist means thanksgiving, you will
recall.
And
we remember in part, I think, because each of us has our own paschal
mystery. Each of our lives is full of
thrills of victory – think of the hope and joy at the birth of a healthy baby,
or the exquisite happiness of a bride and groom walking down the aisle to leave
church on their wedding day.
And
each of us has our own agony of defeat - death of a dear loved one. Fearful illnesses. Job losses.
Broken marriages perhaps, and ultimately our own Good Fridays – our own
passion and death.
By
our recollection, we can join, then, our own joys and sorrows to Our Blessed
Lord’s. Offer them as the sacrifice of our own lives joined to Christ’s supreme
sacrifice, with the assurance that He who is true God and true man knows our
lives, knows our joys and sorrows.
My sisters and
brothers, as we accompany Him all this week on His journey from triumph in
Jerusalem to agony on Calvary, as we remember and bring to the present again
all that He did for us, we have the
sublime hope and deep faith that He accompanies us, on our own journey from cradle
to grave to eternal life.
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