Homily for Palm Sunday: April 1, 2007

Given by the Most Reverend Stephen E. Blaire at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton.

On Palm Sunday we commemorate the entrance into Jerusalem of Jesus as the anointed one of God, in Hebrew the Messiah, in Greek the Christos, in English the Christ. The long journey of Jesus ends outside the city on Golgatha The will of God is fulfilled in the glorification of Jesus in His passion, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven. The salvation of the world is accomplished by the total surrender of Christ in death to the Father. The cross stands at the center of history.

To the unbeliever and the worldly the cross is foolishness. If we follow Christ by embracing the cross we stand on Golgatha outside the culture of today’s city which is characterized by individualism and self-indulgence, the two main obstacles to the cross.

The individual claims supremacy with the highest value being individual rights to self determination, presented under the guise of freedom and toleration. “I am all powerful; I can accomplish whatever I set out to do; if something goes wrong it is somebody else’s fault; I can do whatever I want to do.” In contrast, the cross proclaims that God reigns over my life and I surrender myself to God’s will as found in the Commandments of God and in the way of Jesus Christ.I am set free by Faith in God and in Jesus Christ and my dignity as an individual is found in solidarity with the human race and in the community of the Church.

The self indulgent person is preoccupied with self aggrandizement, self fulfillment, acquisition of possessions, a philosophy of doing whatever is pleasing to self, and often narcissistic to the point of total insensitivity to the needs of others. By contrast the only way to understand the cross is love. Love explains Jesus’ gift of Himself to the Father on our behalf. Love is the way of Christ. Love is the Christian way of life. All love, whether it be erotic or of friendship or of giving is purified when it discovers God. Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” describes love as a journey “out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self giving and thus towards authentic self discovery and indeed the discovery of God.”

The cross may seem foolish to many and an obstacle to others, but for us who believe it is the way of Christ, the way to salvation, the way to human fulfillment, the way to genuine happiness.

Last Update April 2, 2007