Palm Sunday 25C: My song is love unknown

A reflection for Holy Week, as we enter the great events that give us new life in Christ. Written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA.

www.tarsus.ie

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane
D08 F8NW
25.04.13
Palm Sunday

The great events that gave us new life in Christ.

Welcome
Welcome, again, everybody. The drama of the entry into Jerusalem opens our celebration of Holy Week, the week when we celebrate the “great events that gave us new life in Christ.”

Topic
How shall we celebrate this year? Perhaps these three pointers might help.

Steps
1. Even though we mark Holy Week by very similar ceremonies each year, nevertheless each year it is different. It is different because we have changed and the world around us has changed. A year has gone by and we can all look back and ask what happened in that year for me. This could be anything — family, births, bereavements, work, relationships, health and, not least, my own journey of faith and prayer. It would be good to ask, how am I this year as I enter upon the commemorations of the “great events that gave us new life in Christ.”

2. Perhaps this is also the moment to remind ourselves that these celebrations are no mere commemoration. On the contrary, we believe that as we re-enact the “great events that gave us new life in Christ” God offers us again the gift of new life in Christ. First of all, we tell the whole story again because he is risen from the dead. Secondly, this memorial is an effective one: as we do this in memory of him, the very same gifts of compassion, forgiveness, love and healing are offered again to all present, precisely because Jesus is risen from the dead.

3. Such a conviction brings us very close to the Jewish understanding of Passover. This year, the Passover starts on Good Friday evening and continues through Holy Saturday. For the Jewish people Passover too is no mere recollection of the past. An early Jewish document describes how one should approach the Passover in very inspiring terms:

In every generation a person is duty-bound to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said, And you shall tell your son in that day saying, it is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt (Ex. 13:8). Therefore we are duty-bound to thank, praise, glorify, honour, exalt, extol, and bless him who did for our forefathers and for us all these miracles. He brought us forth from slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption, so we should say before him, Hallelujah. (Pesahim 10:5)

I know we are not supposed to say alleluia before Lent is over, but you can see why the person might be excited. The Jewish belief in effective memorial is our belief too.

Conclusion
Holy Week puts before us the “great events that gave us new life in Christ.” Let us come to these events this year with open hearts and open lives. We are reminding ourselves of what lies the very heart of the whole Christian project: the astonishing  love of God made visible in Jesus, in his cross and resurrection. As the poet Samuel Crossman put it several centuries ago, an a very beautiful poem (set to music my John Ireland): 

My song is love unknown,
My Saviour's love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh, and die?