PASSION SUNDAY

This Sunday, called Judica from the first word of the Introit, is also called Passion Sunday, because from this day the Church occupies herself exclusively with the contemplation of the passion and death of Christ. The pictures of Christ crucified are covered today in memory of his having hidden Himself from the Jews until His entrance into Jerusalem, no longer showing Himself in public. (John XI. 54.) Our beloved Abbot Gueranger states: 'Let us go back, in thought, to the sad day of the first sin, when Adam and Eve hid themselves because a guilty conscience told them they were naked. Jesus has come to assure us of our being pardoned, and lo! He hides Himself, not because He is naked--He that is to the saints the garb of holiness and immortality--but because He made Himself weak, that He might make us strong. Our first parents sought to hide themselves from the sight of God; Jesus hides Himself from the eye of men.' How many times have we done wrong and tried to hide from ourselves and God. Joke's on us though; He sees and knows all!

In the Mass the Glory be to the Father, etc. is omitted, because in the person of Christ the Holy Trinity was dishonored. The psalm Judica is not said today, because on this day the high priests held council about our Lord, for which reason the Church in the name of the suffering Saviour uses these words at the Introit:

This Sunday is Passion Sunday. We are starting to think seriously about what Christ did for us. It should have already happened! Anyway, I'd like to put something in that we don't hear anymore, if that's OK with you. Even if it's not!, here goes. The following is called the 'Capitulum', because it is short. And besides, I like it.


The standard of our King comes forth; the mystery of the cross shines upon us, that cross on which Life suffered death, and by His death gave life.

He was pierced with the cruel spear, that, by the Water and the Blood which flowed from the wound, He might cleanse us from sin.

Here on the Cross was fulfilled the prophecy foretold in David's truthful words: 'God hath reigned from the tree.'

O fair and shining tree! beautified by the scarlet of the King, and chosen as the noble trunk that was to touch such sacred limbs.

O blessed tree! on whose arms hung the ransom of the world! It was the balance, wherein was placed the Body of Jesus, and thereby hell lost its prey.

Hail, O Cross! our only hope!

______________________________________________________________________
When Christ told the Jews the truth, He received insults and calumny; they called Him a Samaritan, that is, an unbeliever, a heretic, one possessed of a devil. This was a terrible slander, and it must have pained Him exceedingly, but at the same time it is a great consolation to those who are innocently calumniated, when they consider that Christ Himself received nothing better. St. Augustine consoles such by saying: "O friend, what is there that can happen to you that your Saviour did not suffer before you? Is it slander? He heard it, when He was called a glutton, a drunkard, a heretic, and a rebel, a companion of sinners, one possessed of a devil; He even heard, when casting out devils, that He did so by Beelzebub, prince of devils." (Matt. IX. 34.) He therefore comforts His apostles, saying, If they have called the good man of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household? (Matt, X. 25.) Are the pains bitter? There is no pain so bitter that He has not endured it; for what is. more painful, and at the same time more ignominious, than the death of the cross? For think, says St. Paul, 'diligently upon him who endured such opposition from sinners against himself: that you be not wearied (by all contempt and calumny), fainting in your minds." (Heb. XII. 3.)

I'd also like to add this prayer, from the Passion Sunday readings, which we again wouldn't hear otherwise, for the Holy Father:

O God, the Pastor and Ruler of all the faithful, look down, in thy mercy, on thy servant Francis, whom thou hast appointed Pastor over thy Church: and grant, we beseech thee, that both by word and example, he may edify all those that are under his charge: and, with the flock entrusted to him, arrive at length at eternal happiness. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and forever. Amen.



The following is an excerpt from an Irish priest, St. John Henaghan, who was martyred in the Philippines in 1945. It it worth reading, considering our problems in this life.

CALVARY
A poor tortured mangled body on a cross - such was the ending of the life of the Man-God. On Calvary was wrought the mightiest, the culminating deed of God's love for men. It was this thing, done on a spring day before high Heaven, that St. Paul had always before his eyes, being fascinated and enthralled by the glory and tenderness of such loving kindness. He wondered why the whole world could not see the vision that held his eyes by night and day: "O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you ... before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth, crucified ... ?"

Before the fact of Calvary every other event in this world shrinks into insignificance. Until Christ came the curse of sin lay heavily on mankind. The world could not save itself. The blood of oxen or of goats could not redeem from sin; none of Adam's race could satisfy the justice of God. Someone was needed Whose innocence was great enough to make full atonement to God, Whose Blood would reach the very heart of God, One Who in some way had the power of extending His action to all men, to all times. God so loved the world as to give such a victim - His Only Son.

Everything has to be paid for, precious things in precious coin. What price did the son of God give in exchange for a soul? Come to the Passion and see.

In the supper room where He was to give us His Body for all time, He began to grow sorrowful and to be sad and the face that had glowed with tenderness over the bread and the chalice grew haggard and aged as He bade his followers farewell. In the garden He prayed that He might not drink the chalice of suffering, yet He immediately added - "Not My will, but Thine be done." Christ was like a broken man Whose hopes were gone. He struggled in pain; in the morning, in the place of His agony, the ground was trampled; and there were dark stains on the blades of grass.

Scourging in ancient times was the punishment reserved for the lowest criminals. A freeman was scourged with rods; a slave with whips; and Christ Who took upon himself the form of a Slave, was scourged with Roman whips, which consisted of four thongs, at the ends of which were attached small pieces of bone. The Victim was stripped; and His hands were bound to a low pillar; He had to bend His back to make it easier for the strikers. Take your place in a corner of that barrack room and watch. There was no squeamishness about those Roman soldiers. The whips hissed in the air; the cruel thongs ran round Christ's virginal flesh in stinging lines of pain. He trembled, while His warm red Blood ran down and trickled along the floor. The soldiers laughed at His pangs and the poor figure He cut. He was loosed from the pillar and staggered to where His clothes were laid; there He put on the seamless robe that Mary's fingers had woven.

A new thought came to the soldiers. He said He was a king - a king should have His purple, so they put on Him a soldier's dirty tunic. A King should have His crown: they made a circlet of rushes from the horses' litter, weaving into it thorn branches from the bivouac fire. A King should have His sceptre, so they placed a reed in His right hand. Here was sport for an army. They did things in the Roman style. A King should have His courtiers and His homage: the ranks retired and marched past in mock respect. He was a prophet, so they covered His head with a cloth, and asked Him to divine who struck Him. And as they went by they bent the knee in mockery, and they spat upon Him. "And many other things they did" - many things. Christ was lonely then; He was thinking of that long procession of souls through the ages who would never know He loved them, of sin that hurt more than soldiers' thongs, of thoughts sharper than His crown, of friends as false as Judas, of foes as fierce as the Jews, of men as indifferent to His suffering as those mocking Roman soldiers.

The crowd outside was growing impatient. He was quickly led to Pilate in the sad finery of His wounds. From the sole of His foot to the top of His head there was no soundness in Him. "Behold the man," said Pilate. He was rejected even by His Own; and a cry of hate broke over the assembly like the growl of an angry sea. Nothing so cows a man, so holds him in a grip of pain, as to read hatred in the faces of his fellows. They were getting angry and restless like a circus crowd anxious for a spectacle.

When Jesus was ordered to march off to Calvary, He was a doomed and dying man. We can see the crowds and hear the shouting of the mob mingling with children's voices, while Jesus sick and sore carries the planks that are to be His dying bed. We can see the bleeding figure falling under the Cross. On the way He met his mother - the evangelist does not try to paint that meeting. He grew so weak that they forced a passer-by to carry His Cross - the cruel kindness of men who wanted to see Him nailed upon it. To hang on a Cross for one minute was terrible. He hung for three hours, a mass of pain, suffering in every nerve, hurt in all the secret places of His soul. The least a dying man can ask without refusal is to be left alone to die. There was no privacy in Christ's death. Everything was shameful, cruel and savage. He was hissed and hooted out of life while enemies sat and watched His agony. A cry broke through the gloom and bowing down His head he died. No words were spoken by His friends at the foot of the gallows of shame; they could not speak while they heard the sighs and gasping breath of the victim. When all was over on the hill and darkness fell over the troubled city, a woman was sobbing. Let us share her grief and thus atone for the sins which wrought this agony.

Each year the Church takes her children to Gethsemane and Calvary lest they forget the love that brought Christ from Heaven - a love stronger than disgrace and shame, a love that did not shrink from a sea of sorrow, a love as strong as God Himself. What strange power do we hold within our souls that could lure God from Heaven to Calvary? Do we ever realize this for very joy of soul, that we have been and are so mightily loved by Him? See how much He cared: go around your crucifix on a voyage of discovery; search out and count those several wounds on His Body; look into that heart to know how much our ingratitude hurt; study the look of His bleeding body "where men have written hate and sin, and God has written love." "The Son of God ... loved me, and delivered Himself for me," cried out St. Paul like one intoxicated. Were we to realize the extent of Christ's love for us, could any humiliation on earth hurt us any more?

The Cross is the great pulpit from which Christ preaches what sin is, what God's mercy is, what a man's soul is worth, what the soul of a dying pagan child means to Him. It is Our Lord's final argument to melt the heart of the sinner and convince him of forgiveness - spoken in the plainest language, through a body crushed and broken. It changes the values of life, places strange worth upon pain that is borne in union with the crucified, and lifts the hearts of men to a kingdom that is not of this world.

The Cross, however, is not meant to be merely a comfort in remorse and suffering. The sight of our crucified Lord has another terrible side. We cannot trifle with such an offering of love. We must answer back with a love that yields pain for pain, life for life, love for love. Each one of us is tested by his attitude to the Divine sufferer. We hesitate to give ourselves without reserve. We haggle and bargain as if all we had were not His: we cower and are afraid to meet His Own extravagance of love upon the Cross, because our hearts are mean. Yet, until we surrender all, until we lay our life at His feet, until we learn to make an act of faith in the value of suffering with Him, until we trust Him so far that our minds can rise to an act of quiet contentment amidst our sorrow and poverty, we shall not have understood the pathos and appeal of those outstretched wounded hands.

Are you ready?