Prayer and Deepest Sympathy

Palm Sunday

This coming Sunday, 2nd April, is Palm Sunday. The following reflection by Ana Siufi RSM explores what may be some of the implications of Palm Sunday for Christians today. 

“Many took palm branches and came out to meet him shouting: Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (John 12:13)

Daily, we see many people break promises and forget the lessons or advice they give. There are plenty of examples of erratic or clearly contradictory behaviours and discourses in our own lives, communities or institutions.

In Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, the arrival of a teacher, healer and prophet who worked wonders and spoke with authority elicited a welcome full of enthusiasm, songs and honours, with palm branches and cloaks laid to make a path for the borrowed donkey on which he was riding. Surely Jesus still held the memory of this a few days later when he had to face the betrayal, conspiracy, denials, fear, flight and abandonment of the disciples, who shouted condemnation or were indifferently silent. He loved this complicated humanity to the end, and he teaches us how to love it ourselves.

Palm Sunday reveals to us a humanised God who fully accepts human contradictions. God embraces us as we are: passionate or asleep, liberated or full of prejudices, capable of shuddering and crying as well as anesthetizing and killing, admirers or despisers of beauty and holiness, fighters for justice or sold-out traitors, pouring out tenderness or enjoying torture, defending peace or waging wars.

Palm Sunday, yes, marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most sacred time of year for Christians. It may also be a day for Christians to ponder what they are entering into on a daily basis? Or who or what needs welcoming?

Let us Pray, a prayer for Holy Week.

Broken Bread

God, whom we meet in bread and wine,

fill us with your compassion,

that we may hear the cries of the hungry

and reach out to those in need.

Engender in us a thirst for justice,

that the hungry will be satisfied

and the rich sent empty away.

Roll away our apathy

that, with arms outstretched,

we may offer life in place of death

and hope in the face of despair.

Amen.

Annabel Shilson-Thomas/CAFOD

We offer our prayerful support to the Clode Family on the recent passing of  Lesley Clode, Nanna of Jorja, Year 11. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.