The Passover – We are gathering to remember who we are, where we have been, and that something is about to happen that changes us. We practice this not only to mark the historical and ongoing dying and rising of Jesus, but also so we can do it in the Holy Thursdays of our ordinary lives. When we hold vigil with a loved one who is dying, we eat last meals, play last games, sing last songs. When someone is moving, we get together for a last visit, make a favourite meal, wash and pack clothes. These rituals of remembering and anticipating are critical to moving through change. Jesus eats with His friends and makes one last grand gesture of service to His people. So sink deeply into this Holy Thursday Mass and the Triduum as practice for the transitions life will ask of you in the coming year. Practice finding meaning for your life here, so you can be a witness to the God who meets us in changes of all kinds in the world.

Prayer of the Faithful: For reverence for the rituals we need, in church and in our lives, we pray to the Lord.

Text: CCCB – National Pastoral Initiative for Life and the Family

(Taken from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary post Holy Week 2019)

Friends, on this Palm Sunday, Matthew’s magnificent Gospel of the Passion bids us to reflect on the seriousness of sin.

To be sure, the Gospel proclaimed by the first Christians involves the glorious Resurrection, but those initial evangelists never let their hearers forget that the one who had been raised was none other than the one who had been crucified.

So the question was—and remains—why would God’s salvation of the human race have to include something as horrifying as the Crucifixion of the Son of God?

Here’s the point. The Scriptural authors understand sin not so much as a series of acts as a condition in which we are stuck. No amount of merely human effort could possibly solve the problem. Something awful had to be done on our behalf in order to offset the awfulness of sin.

With this biblical realism in mind, we can begin to comprehend why the Crucifixion of the Son of God was necessary. The just rapport between God and human beings could not be reestablished either through our moral effort or with simply a word of forgiveness. Something had to be done—and God alone could do it.

Reflect: Meditate on one of Christianity’s most mysterious truths: that the Crucifixion of the Son of God was necessary.

Reflection taken from the Daily Meditations from Bishop Robert Barron