Thoughts on Palm Sunday

 Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, that most solemn week of our Church’s year when we contemplate the passion and death of our Lord that leads to His glorious Resurrection. The idea of being on pilgrimage this week occurs to me. In the Middle Ages pilgrimages were common. You probably remember having to read some of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, still unfinished at his death in 1400. The word that Chaucer uses for pilgrims is palmers. “And palmers . . ./ from every shires ende/ Of Engelond, to Caunterbury” they go. The word palmer was used because those pilgrims who ventured (3,000 miles!) all the way from England to Jerusalem, the greatest of pilgrimages, brought back a palm frond as their prized souvenir. On Palm Sunday you receive your blessed palms. So, this Holy Week be a “palmer,” be a pilgrim.   

During Holy Week it is important to try to be with Jesus.  In

your prayer imagine those last few days, beginning with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the crowds waving palms.  Try to see in your imagination our Lord enduring the terrible pain and suffering, both mental and physical.  He endures such suffering to save us from our sins and to assure that we, like the Good Thief, can be happy with Him forever in Paradise.  This suffering leading to salvation is the Father’s will, and Jesus always follows His Father’s will perfectly. 

So, this week try to make a pilgrimage journeying with Jesus as He enters Jerusalem, as He makes plans for the Passover supper, as He gives the Apostles the Eucharist and instructs them the last time.  Then walk with Him to Gethsemane and see His suffering begin.  Stay with Him that longnight of His arrest.  Call to mind the many agonizing events of Good Friday, perhaps praying the Stations of the Cross and the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.  Then wait at the tomb and mourn quietly with the Church on Holy Saturday.  But do not allow your pilgrimage of Holy Week to sadden or discourage you.  After all, we know the rest of the story!  May your Holy Week pilgrimage make ever more clear God’s tremendous love for us, and

what He was willing to do to save us.  As St. John Henry Newman wrote of God’s love in his Meditations on Christian Doctrine, “He [God] preferred to regain me rather than to create new worlds.”  (March 7, 1848)   

 

Don Saunders, S.J.