HOMILY - PALM/PASSION SUNDAY - A

ST. ANTHONY CHURCH – GREENVILLE, SC

APRIL 9, 2006  -  8 & 11AM MASSES

May the Lord’s passion change our hearts to love.

Imagine walking into the Vatican and receiving the death penalty, walking into our religion’s headquarters to be condemned by the Pope.

Imagine being divine - suffering at the hands of what you created. Imagine being willing! Imagine deciding to be that faithful.

Today our feast is fittingly called the Passion. Wouldn’t you have to have passion to walk His walk? to remain that faithful?

We wave palm, the princely tree which adorns palaces, placed on the sarcophagus of rulers. We wave the palm of triumph. Yet where is the triumph? Our king goes by us to His death.

There is in the same moment exclamations of exhilaration - for His strength and faithfulness, we hear Hosanna! All Glory Laud and Honor! And exclamations of horror as He is announced and then denounced, Crucify Him! We want Barabbas! He must die!

How can we hold these two exclamations together?

Yet we experience similar realities today.  Haitian and Cuban people travel crammed onto whatever will float - and die drowning.  Depending on whether you are Sunni, Shiia, Kurd you too are mocked, hated by a crowd.  Today Genocide is happening in Darfur, Protestant and Catholic Irish reject each other, some whites reject some blacks, Israelis reject Palestinians, and in Greenville? Immigrants will come tomorrow to be both hailed and condemned.  I plan to stand with them on Main Street.

There is beauty and ugliness at the same time – just like then.

While no one can be compared with Jesus Christ, we can ask, who did He suffer and die defending? Who did He heal on the sabbath?

Who did He break a law for? Who did He bring the good news of the kingdom to? The poor, the sick, those who were alienated by others as being of less value. This moment of triumph and tragedy is ours.

We see the triumph in Jesus’ fidelity to all people, and the tragedy of His death, the value of humanity rejected.

There are processions like Jesus’ processions of faithfulness all around us.  The monster sized March of Dimes walk on the 29^th, the rally downtown tomorrow for immigrants, the outcry regarding the death penalty, meetings to be scheduled to protect the poor of our type of neighborhoods here in the West End.  Our faith community is busy about faithfulness. We understand what Jesus Christ has done, and for whom, because we are in procession too.

We have provided people a home, food, kerosene, light bill money, rent assistance, companionship.  We walk with, and we feel called to do more.

This parish, full of people like you who stand for the needs of all, is a triumph of Spirit, the Spirit of the walking man, Jesus Christ. While few of us can imagine having to stand before friends who want to kill us, we take our share of hardship to follow the example so bitter sweet this Passion day.

Wave a palm at that.